In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of Californias Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in Californias public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled Judging Books by Their Covers, Feynman analyzed the Commissions idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products. Judging Books by Their Covers appeared as a chapter in Surely Youre Joking, Mr. Feynman! -- Feynmans autobiographical book that was published in 1985 by W.W. Norton & Company. To introduce a series of articles about corruption in schoolbook-adoption proceedings, we present here (with permission from W.W. Norton & Company) an extended excerpt from Feynmans narrative. As our Annals of Corruption series unfolds, readers will see that Feynmans account is as timely now as it was when he wrote it. State adoption proceedings still are pervaded by sham, malfeasance and ludicrous incompetence, and they still reflect cozy connections between state agencies and schoolbook companies. Judging Books by Their Covers Richard P. Feynman I was giving a series of freshman physics lectures [in 1964], and after one of them, Tom Harvey, who assisted me in putting on the demonstrations, said, You oughta see whats happening to mathematics in schoolbooks! My daughter comes home with a lot of crazy stuff! I didnt pay much attention to what he said. But the next day I got a telephone call from a pretty famous lawyer here in Pasadena, Mr. Norris, who was at that time on the State Board of Education. He asked me if I would serve on the State Curriculum Commission, which had to choose the new schoolbooks for the state of California. You see, the state had a law that all of the schoolbooks used by all of the kids in all of the public schools have to be chosen by the State Board of Education, so they have a committee to look over the books and to give them advice on which books to take. It happened that a lot of the books were on a new method of teaching arithmetic that they called new math, and since usually the only people to look at the books were schoolteachers or administrators in education, they thought it would be a good idea to have somebody who uses mathematics scientifically, who knows what the end product is and what were trying to teach it for, to help in the evaluation of the schoolbooks. I must have had, by this time, a guilty feeling about not cooperating with the government, because I agreed to get on this committee. Immediately I began getting letters and telephone calls from schoolbook publishers. They said things like, Were very glad to hear youre on the committee because we really wanted a scientific guy . . . and Its wonderful to have a scientist on the committee, because our books are scientifically oriented . . . But they also said things like, Wed like to explain to you what our book is about . . . and Well be very glad to help you in any way we can to judge our books . . . That seemed to me kind of crazy. Im an objective scientist, and it seemed to me that since the only thing the kids in school are going to get is the books (and the teachers get the teachers manual, which I would also get), any extra explanation from the company was a distortion. So I didnt want to speak to any of the publishers and always replied, You dont have to explain; Im sure the books will speak for themselves. . . . textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 21:00:00 +0000