|
|
Posted by Randy Howard on 03/10/07 19:19
On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:36:13 -0600, Richard Heathfield wrote
(in article <x92dnb1jgJWJX2_YRVnyvwA@bt.com>):
> robert maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> If you want to validate a textbook, you have a group of students
>> actually try learning from it, you don't have a bunch of experts
>> nitpick it to death.
>
> That depends on what you're validating. If you're checking that the book
> is comprehensible to students, then by all means use students in your
> test suite. But if you're trying to ascertain whether the information
> you are giving out is *right*, then you had better break out your
> six-pak of independent experts after all.
I've had this problem on more than a few occasions with my own kids,
where their textbooks have outright falsehoods in them, which of course
you can either argue with, and get answers wrong on the test, as the
current crop of "teachers" know nothing that isn't in their class guide
given to them by the education agency, or you can spend a lot of time
having the kids give the pseudo-correct answers in the class homework
and on the test(s), while making sure they know the real truth
independently.
Don't get me started on teachers that can not spell or do math problems
correctly. On more than one occasion a grade has been reversed because
it was marked incorrectly, and then I had to actually go speak with the
teacher and show them how to solve the problem correctly on their own
tests.
> Students, by definition, do
> not have enough information to judge whether a book is correct or not.
> Just a day or two ago in comp.lang.c, a student defended an illegal
> construct by saying it was in his textbook, and surely textbooks
> wouldn't have mistakes in them...
Sort of like those people that think that if something is on
television, then it must be true, or if it is in wikipedia, then it
must be true, ..... a bad problem when nobody actually checks
anything out for themselves anymore.
> I see no value in teaching students incorrect information, no matter how
> readable it is (unless, of course, your objective is to become the next
> Herbert Schildt).
I agree, but the approach taken seems to backfire sometimes. I think
that if the snide-o-meter is pegged too hard in the initial responses,
the author of these "I've decided to write a book because none of the
other ones are any good" deals gets upset, and then refuses to fix
things, even when they /know/ they are wrong, just to prove that they
don't have to listen to people that are mean to them.
--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|