Textbook

A textbook is a book that strives to teach a student about a particular discipline, usually academic, and prepare him or her to perform some task or tasks using the acquired learning.

Even into this computer age, textbooks are overwhelmingly hard copies that are distributed. In American colleges, most textbooks are chosen by the professor teaching the course. In American K-12 schools a local school board often has a deciding vote on which textbooks are purchased

Textbook controversies

Price

Many university students complain of unreasonably high textbook costs, sometimes $100 USD or more. They often claim that this represents price gouging on the part of the publisher. Furthermore, they say that often a publisher will print a new edition of a textbook solely to make the older editions obsolete; this temporarily eliminates the used textbook market, thereby boosting the publisher's profits.

Publishers say that textbooks are indeed as expensive to produce as their prices indicate. Textbooks have a very limited market—almost exclusively college students who need the book for a course—and would be unprofitable to produce if they were priced any lower. Additionally, textbooks are often thick, printed on heavy paper, and printed in color, all of which dramatically increase their cost.

Selection

Sometimes students and parents claim that certain textbooks have been selected for use because of factors irrelevant to their teaching efficacy. The most common complaint at the university level is that professors will use a textbook written by themselves or their colleagues. At the K-12 level, it is sometimes alleged the school board members and other school officials have been bribed by publishing houses in exchange for buying textbooks from that publishing house.

Content

While textbooks are in principle objective, there are sometimes accusations that a textbook has been written to support or suppress a particular point of view about a certain subject. Usually the disputed subject is controversial in its own right. Examples include creationism and distasteful periods in national history, such as the treatment in Japanese textbooks of Japan's invasion of China and Korea in World War II. These controversies may lead to lawsuits as one side tries to force its viewpoint into textbooks or eliminate opposing viewpoints from textbooks.

See also:

• Wikibooks [1] (http://wikibooks.org) - A sister project to Wikipedia whose goal is to create textbooks.

External links

• History Textbook Controversies in Japan (http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-1/japan.htm)
• Improving the Use of Elementary Social Studies Textbooks (http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-924/use.htm)
• High School Biology Textbooks Do Not Meet National Standards (http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-1/biology.htm)
• The Textbook League (http://www.textbookleague.org/)

ja:教科書