Tag: textbooks

Commentary: Classical v. Unclassical Curricula

American Greatness
Teacher and Student

Chad Aldeman, a Virginia-based researcher who focuses on education-related issues, recently detailed the educational experience of his daughter, who completed sixth grade in June. He writes that her teachers didn’t use textbooks, assign homework, or expect kids to study at home for tests, didn’t teach kids to sound out words, and didn’t drill times tables. He also mentions that there were no spelling tests, students didn’t practice handwriting of any kind, cursive or otherwise, and didn’t learn the 50 states and their capitals, let alone world geography.

Aldeman is very concerned by this shift, arguing that her educational experience has “reduced instructional time devoted to science and social studies and emphasized isolated skills such as critical thinking or reading comprehension over teaching students a coherent body of knowledge and facts.”

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Hundreds of Sociology Syllabi Contain Liberal Bias Across Assignments and Readings, Survey Finds

Admin

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Campus Reform obtained copies of the syllabi from Spring 2021 undergraduate sociology classes at six universities.

Universities include: the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ohio State University–Columbus, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign.

In total, Campus Reform surveyed 201 undergraduate course syllabi across these institutions. This number included 25 100-level introduction to sociology courses, which are sometimes taken by non-majors to fulfill general education requirements. The results of the survey, divided into the categories of assignments, biased language, and common textbooks and readings, are below.

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College Textbook Blames COVID Deaths on Americans Who Oppose Lockdowns

Michigan Star Staff

A textbook assigned to students at a North Carolina community college states that COVID-19 protocols “saved tens of thousands of lives” while Americans who disagreed with those restrictions caused deaths.

“Most Americans responded to the pandemic by limiting their social contact, covering their faces when going out, and washing their hands thoroughly after they did,” the passage begins and then continues with, “yet lives were lost because some Americans held beliefs that were at odds with the facts.”

The textbook appeared in the POL 120: American Government course at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte.

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Commentary: Student Frustration with the Flawed Textbook Market Is Justified

Michigan Star Staff

Dozens of student government executives wrote a letter recently urging the Department of Labor to block a merger between two giants of the textbook industry. In May, McGraw-Hill and Cengage announced they would be pursuing a merger. As two of the five major textbook publishers that currently have 80 percent of the market, this merger would form the second-largest textbook publisher in the US.

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