Paula Marantz Cohen writes an excellent review of Diane Ravitch’s book The Language Police (from April 2003), which shows how today’s textbooks conjure up a world so sanitized of reality that they turn students into cynics. The politics of victimhood and absurd levels of PC predominates over learning and even plausibility. The book sounds excellent, even the analysis of the institutional factors that go into the production of such unimaginative textbooks, but what the review (and the book?) leaves out would seem like an obvious point: the public sector is the major buyer of these textbooks. That’s why they are politicized in the extreme. That’s why they dominate the market (such as it is). That’s why the usual market feedback mechanisms don’t seem to work. And that’s always why this book is not likely to make a difference in public institutions. Private ones (commercial, home-based, religious institutions, etc.) are another matter. (Pointer from A&LDaily)
Who is the Buyer of these Textbooks?
