James Drogan

A few days ago I posted regarding my experience with publishing my first, albeit somewhat crude by generally accepted standards, book.

This morning, Greg Mankiw's blog takes me to a post by Uwe E. Reinhardt at Princeton titled "Choosing textbooks and toothpaste."

The following paragraph in Prof. Reinhardt's post caught my eye.

"As colleague Branson and I presented our ideas to sundry publishers, we quickly discovered that it probably would be too advanced and too revolutionary. It appears that to be publishable, an introductory textbook in economics now must fit snugly into a cookie-cutter mold that appeals to the mass market for textbooks, which now includes high schools. This requirement dictates the remarkable homogeneity among introductory economics texts and also explains why many of them do not engage Ivy League students. In their quest to tailor their textbooks to the mass market, some publishers even highlight with yellow markers passages in the text they deem important. The thought appears to be that students either are preoccupied listening to their iPods while reading the text or are just plain too dumb to highlight important passages on their own."

Perhaps the textbook publishers have too much control over the pedagogy.  I'm tempted to think this has been aided by the ambitions of professors and academic institutions to publish (or perish?).   Are we, at ever increasing prices,  imposing a homogeneity in our teaching that, in the long run, does a disservice to  all (except the publishers)?

Socrates, as far as know, did not require a textbook.  I've often thought that, if I am any good at all as a teacher, I ought to be able to step into a room with nothing more than a marker, a whiteboard, and a group of students eager to discover knowledge, and do good by doing well.