Decay of our Education System (or the lack thereof)

[Esper]

If Texas publishers manage to control the national content of textbooks, then I'd look into some kind of regulation that breaks up what seems to be a lack of competition. Or maybe less regulation - make it easier for school boards or schools to introduce the kind of textbooks that they would see fit to using. Hopefully the democracy of school-parent councils will shine through and the people will demand and find it easier to obtain the quality education they need. But perhaps I shouldn't be so optimistic. Who knows if the people have the drive and spirit within them to secure what they ought to have.

I hate to sound like a one-trick-pony, but schools would probably need money to shop around for textbooks. I imagine the massed produced Texas originals are cheaper on the whole for a lot of people. I don't really know though.

And in this period of hyper-politicization everything is open to the accusation of bias so I imagine every school would fight over the curriculum and in small, rural, conservative towns you'd get books that most of the citizens of the town would want.

 

[Kanzler]

I hate to sound like a one-trick-pony, but schools would probably need money to shop around for textbooks. I imagine the massed produced Texas originals are cheaper on the whole for a lot of people. I don't really know though.

And in this period of hyper-politicization everything is open to the accusation of bias so I imagine every school would fight over the curriculum and in small, rural, conservative towns you'd get books that most of the citizens of the town would want.

Ha, okay, let's just go with the breaking down of Texas publishers' grip on the market idea then. If they dominate the market, then prices are higher than what they should be, not lower. If anything, new innovations in education should come to light in the future. Hopefully open textbooks catches on and becomes an incentive for companies to reduce prices and hurt their profits. I'm not sure how, but something should be done about helping start-up textbook companies with lowering their start-up costs, which is prohibiting competition and leading to the situation we're talking about right now.

And if hyper-politicization is the name of the game, then only the people can be at fault. In that case I'd advocate for a greater role of academic organizations in the selection of the textbook and curriculum. This comes at a cost to democracy, but if all people are going to do is be biased then what's the point?