The process by which Montgomery County has partnered with Pearson is unsettling–it seems to have come as a relative surprise to teachers and parents. According to the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County Maryland blog, the Pearson contract was a done deal even before it was debated by the school board, and apparetly MCPS has already hired staff with taxpayer dollars to begin working on the curriculum for Pearson.

The downstream effects of the deal are detrimental to teaching and learning in Montgomery County, and potentially to other school districts if Pearson’s marketing efforts are successful. Pearson will be the sole and exclusive owner of all the rights to the curriculum and teacher professional development materials. According to a response penned by the Post’s Valerie Strauss, “[i]f Montgomery County decides it wants to use any of the materials that Pearson issues in its national versions, MCPS will have to pay, albeit at a 60 percent discount.” In order to fill a short term budget crisis, Montgomery County has traded teachers’ creativity and the good name of MCPS.

By transferring the copyright to Pearson, MCPS is throwing away a huge opportunity to engage with teachers, students and content providers in supporting open educational resources. Open education efforts have been blossoming in entrepreneurial schools, state education technology offices, and federal departments. Instead of exploring the benefits to adoption of innovative OER–teaching and learning materials in the public domain or released under an open license that allows for collaboration, customization, and updating of content–Pearson will hold materials under its lock and key, and relicense materials paid for by Maryland taxpayers to other schools around the country.

OER and open education has been discussed in the National Educational Technology Plan, the National Broadband Plan, in proposed federal legislation, and within grant priorities via the U.S. Department of Education. But, with the Pearson deal, we still see the old publishing institutions gobbling up copyrights and replicating the old model akin to those perpetuated by the vilified scholarly publishing industry. Perhaps what’s most frustrating about the Pearson deal is that policymakers and government staff at places like the Department of Education working to support OER have remained generally empathetic to the concerns of the publishing industry. They recognize that there is a a role for experienced publishers in providing quality content and supplemental resources for teaching and learning to schools throughout the U.S. Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, reiterated this point in a March 3 speech to the Association of American Publishers:

To support technological innovation in online learning, the president has proposed investing $500 million over ten years in an Online Skills Initiative designed to produce open and free high-quality courses that contribute to post-secondary access and success. These courses can and will be used by students, institutions and self-learners and will also be freely available to commercial firms.

Duncan realizes that innovative teachers, motivated students, and traditional publishers will have a role in helping craft quality educational content, and leaves open the opportunity for publishers to add value (and make money too) with openly licensed materials. However, the Pearson deal gives the publisher complete control of the content–probably not what Duncan had in mind. It now seems that in Montgomery County, publicly funded educational content will be privately owned and controlled by a massive publishing giant.

Basically, I started out thinking CC was cool—that on the whole, it made sense. But I never thought it could change the world or anything. I thought it gave creators more choices, especially ‘cause this crazy copyright system of ours was so confusing to the average person. It seemed to make especial sense in education, since that’s what people do—they share to teach and they share to learn. Duh. But that was the whole of it really. I didn’t think much further than that two years ago. I thought promoting the CC licenses to people who wanted to use them and people who probably should use them was what I was in the business of doing.

But as I work further in this space, I talk to a lot more people and I observe a lot more people. I observe the different effects that Creative Commons, as the legal and technical infrastructure of open education and open culture generally, has had on a generation. I also see potential for future generations, not just mine. And I have come to realize that CC can do more than facilitate a culture of sharing in the arts and education. CC can really change the social landscape of things, and it has already effected this social change in the arts. I think it can do the same in education. But what do I mean by social change?

Imagine the world of OER without CC. The term “open educational resource” would be a vacuous or redundant term at best. “Open” would simply mean freely accessible. Without CC, individuals or organizations would continue to offer their resources under custom terms (aka a custom license*) or under no terms at all. Custom licenses would give certain people/entities permission to freely access and maybe to freely do other things with the content, depending on who they were and what they wanted to do. But these types of custom permissions have always existed in education, even before the internet came into being. In nonvirtual life, there are always special exceptions for education—such as student discounts, libraries, professors and teachers who rely on fair use to make copies of publications for use in their classrooms. Custom licenses with exceptions for education would merely migrate these types of activities online.

Custom licenses currently exist*, all over the internet in fact. But as we have seen with the arts, the internet enables so much more than that. Relying only on existing copyright laws to continue regulating educational activities is to continue with a status quo that does a huge disservice to what is possible. Because it doesn’t take you long to realize that the status quo in education is mediocre. The old systems are comfortable, but they are also inefficient, and hugely debilitating when educators and learners want to share and collaborate outside of their institutions. Freely available educational resources under standard copyright law are either all-rights-reserved or custom licensed. The ability to sort out copyright law and the various custom licenses is no easy task, even for lawyers. Teams of lawyers often take years to work out details in policy that will allow individuals from separate institutions to collaborate, and there is similar red tape even between departments within the same institution. I don’t even want to go into what it’s like for different countries. What user/educator/learner is going to go through the trouble of reading all the different terms everything is under to synthesizing and concluding what can be used with what? Not many. And even if they did, their attempt would be an interpretation.

Granted, there are many working towards copyright reform, and pushing reliance on copyright exceptions and limitations, such as fair use. This side of things is important too. But CC is more than just a temporary fix to the copyright problem.

What is so revolutionary about CC licenses in the arts is not that they made possible or somehow engendered a sharing culture that never before existed. The sharing culture already existed, just as amateur creators—creators who love making art for the sake of art—already existed. Certainly, CC made legal that sharing culture, gave them a way to move their activities online and across timezones, but that is only one of CC’s contributions. Other obvious contributions were making that sharing easy with human-readable deeds, and making that sharing discoverable with RDFa. CC licenses continue to cultivate and help sustain the sharing culture in the arts, but it did not originate that sharing culture.

You know that saying, the world is your oyster? Well, what is so revolutionary about CC licenses in the arts is that it transformed artists’ level of engagement with each other over the internet. The internet was useful for many things before CC, but now the internet has become a veritable farm for oysters, with each artist contributing to find, grow, or cultivate art. And the most amazing thing is that many of them do it for free. Which brings us to the second revolutionary outcome of CC licenses—it has made the world realize that there is this community of artists who love to create for the sake of creating. It has brought to the surface a community that used to be underground and guerrilla-organized, and it has provided that community with an open space in which to work, collaborate, and create. Now that community is very much a movement, connected not only by their passion for making art but by their passion for sharing it. For the first time, artists have the upper hand over institutions, galleries and recording companies. Artists no longer have to go through a middleman to support and sustain themselves. Artists can freely leverage the internet to continue doing what they have always loved doing, and as with anything where the scope becomes bigger than it once was, artists have discovered many, many more possibilities for creativity and collaboration in art-making than ever before. These are the social changes that CC licenses enabled in the arts. And these are the social changes that CC licenses can enable in education.

Because we can do better than the status quo. OER without CC is not OER; it is old educational practices migrated online under the guise of “open.” Access to free materials is not revolutionary; you had libraries and public schools before the internet. What is revolutionary: transforming educators’ and learners’ level of engagement with each other over the internet—in a sense making the internet their oyster. What is revolutionary: bringing to the surface the community of educators and learners who already share and collaborate in guerrilla fashion and providing them with an open space to continue that collaboration and innovation. What is revolutionary: giving educators and learners the upper hand over institutions, academic journals, and textbook companies. What is revolutionary: changing the social landscape of education through copyright.

I think we have to stop viewing education itself as a silo, giving it a special status or exception because it’s “education.” The world of education is the world of culture and creativity. What people often don’t realize or recognize is that teaching and learning are creative processes. What is a creative process in the arts (remix) is also very much present in education. Educators and learners remix all the time; that is the nature of teaching and learning. (Good) teaching is to synthesize concepts with materials and to relay that synthesis in scholarship or living form with learners. Learning is to pull apart and put together the same concepts and materials to produce something “original” that is the result of this remix. But most importantly, the creative process occurs in the interaction between both groups when the lines between the roles are blurred.

It’s not just about sharing for free. I can share for free without CC, that’s plain enough. All I have to do is slap on a notice that says “free to take”, much like when people leave their stuff behind in boxes on the sidewalk. But that doesn’t really do much more than shift ownership of crap you don’t want to someone who wants it. There’s no interaction there, no exchange that results in more than what I started with. What CC facilitates is that interaction and exchange that results in more than “free to take.” Innovation results. Creativity results. Change, the social kind, results. People start sharing differently, purposefully. We start rethinking old systems, old ways of seeing education. And that’s when we start using CC to help us achieve ends beyond “free to take.” Like in the arts—for some, CC became a tool to make money, bring fame, create awareness. In education, similar and greater outcomes can be achieved by leveraging open standards.

Because in the end, CC’s role in education is different from its role in the arts. In the arts, CC gives creators (namely, artists, musicians) a choice–it’s an opt-in system. In education, the system does not depend on commercial values so much to keep it alive. A lot of artists make their living being artists, and yet they freely share and collaborate regardless. But in education, most people don’t make a living selling their lesson plans and writing papers. People make a living sharing their expertise with others, building on their work with others, thereby building their reputation and improving their teaching and learning outcomes. So you start thinking about all the stuff that’s possible when you change the system from “opt-in to open”, to “opt-out of open”. You start rethinking the default of all-rights-reserved and how that would look if it was some-rights reserved, or even no-rights-reserved. What, after all, do we value in the field of education more than in the field of the arts? And how can we reflect those values in new and better ways of doing things?

The open education community today is only a small subsection of those involved in education worldwide, but some great initiatives and projects have already come out of it. An initiative like Peer 2 Peer University is a prime example of the social change that can happen in education when you start building on the concepts of open. P2PU is teaching and learning by peers for peers, and it is organized learning that is taking place outside of any institution. It’s what can happen when the default changes, when open educational resources scale. CC helps make that scale possible, which is what will ultimately transform the social landscape of education.

*Custom licenses contain text that declares “free for ____ and ____”; the blanks are usually filled with a type of use and type of group or entity, ie. for “educational” / “noncommercial” / “personal” use by “individuals” / “schools” / “nonprofits”.

*See “What status for “open”? An examination of the licensing policies of open educational organizations and projects”

I believe we shouldn’t bring ideology into what I believe is best formulated as a pragmatic argument. That is to say, I think that the strongest advocacy for openness (in a general sense) is achieved through demonstrating the utility it creates, not the imperative it satisfies. Let me try and spell out why I think that’s true for openness in education. Just to preface (similar to David Wiley’s all-caps disclaimer here), unless otherwise stated when I’m talking about openness I’m speaking in the context of educational content.

George (responding to David Wiley) writes:

Wiley suggests that: “If another person or institution’s approach to openness doesn’t help you meet your goals, then look for help somewhere else – don’t criticize them”.

I disagree. We should criticize. We should debate. By not criticizing gradient views of openness, by failing to establish a solid foundation on which to discuss openness, we are providing an ideology for our generation, not one that serves as a future-focused movement. Openness is a hard topic to discuss ideologically because it’s important. Yes, pragmatics are easier. But pragmatics have a short life span.

I agree with the takeaway from George’s argument, that we should criticize institutions and projects that “get it wrong” in some way and that we should debate and establish foundational principles of terms like “open”, but I disagree with the reasons; that commitment to openness should be at its core an ideological commitment and that we should be providing a timeless ideology for a movement when we define openness.

First let me say that having a set of principles that define a term like “open” is extremely important, not only for community guidance and development but for institutional and government policy. Part of my job at CC Learn is to think and write about how these principles should be formulated. And although I think that there are times where there is a compelling need for ideology, I disagree that formulating the principles of openness should be an ideological activity.

The function of criticizing and debating principles of openness should be a method for advocates to converge on best practices and recommendations on how to extract the most utility from a policy of openness. Foundational principles of “openness” should be aimed at defining the ways in which specific implementations of “open” will extract the most utility rather than to define which behaviors should or should not be be considered “open”.

But why? Why is it that principles of openness based on ideology wouldn’t create the most utility? I think there are a few reasons. George mentions some of the challenges to ideologies, one being that

Reality has a way of eroding the ideologies at implementation.

This is absolutely true. The semantics of an ideology can become contextualized, filtered, altered, watered down, reinterpreted, hijacked, or however you want to describe it (there are many examples, consider the labels “green” or “organic”). George takes this fact to show that we need more ideologues pushing for a strong ideology around open.

But it is for this very weakness that the open education movement should not rely on unhinged ideological forces. Instead, we should encourage decisions made at implementation to be made with full knowledge of the reasons behind the principles of openness, rather than encourage a reliance on the imperative. This way there will be no ideology to subvert, but rather a system of interlocking goals, desires, and shared utility that we want to eventually define certain practices like teaching or publishing a textbook. Teachers should be encouraged to use and create OER because OER have the desirable qualities X and Y, not because the act of using OER is ideologically sound. It’s difficult to convince a state or a district to change their practices because you care a lot about openness. They must be sympathetic (at some level) to why you care about it.

So the semantics of pragmatic advocacy are hard to hijack and rarely mislead. But as George argues, don’t pragmatic formulations of openness needlessly complicate an otherwise powerful meme?

Why spend days, even months, debating seemingly insignificant details of openness? Why not just produce something and share it in any manner you wish? Why not just let openness evolve as it is?

Let’s consider one of these seemingly insignificant details of openness and see how they become important.

There is a practical argument against creating custom and non-standardized “open” licenses for educational content. You could easily fully identify with an ideology of openness, write your own “open” license that meets what you think are all of the ideological principles of open, and feel your job as an advocate and practitioner is complete. You would “produce something and share it in [the] manner you wish”.

But the somewhat unintuitive reality is that custom licenses decrease legal interoperability and increase barriers to reuse. It is a sub-optimal practice, but one that would be much more obvious to a pragmatist than an ideologue. The ideologue tends to be interested only in the uniform adherence to certain general ideas, regardless of practical realities. In this example, the real world reality is that certain licenses have emerged as a global standard for open content and that deviation from these public licenses is a far from optimal decision given a desire for a high level of content interoperability. The pragmatist attempts to accommodate the realities of the world in the formulation of principles of openness in the interest of directing these incremental advances towards a better future, while the ideologue begins with a general expression of the situation in which the maximal utility will have been obtained and expects the course of action to be obvious. The ideologue’s end result is a set of principles that set a finish line instead of defining a path. And because of that, seemingly small details such as license interoperability can be overlooked leading to a suboptimal situation of decreased interoperability.

It’s worth pausing to reiterate (in case it isn’t clear) that I’m not arguing that an ideology is a priori incapable of accommodating the challenges of license interoperability and other related challenges in open education. Rather, I want to argue that ideologically conceived principles of “openness” will tend to result in implementations of openness that have lower utility than implementations following pragmatically conceived principles.

As George writes:

Openness should mean something. It should be driven by ideology, rather than convenience. As a foundational principle in education, openness should be discussed, critiqued, encouraged, and aggressively preserved.

It is absolutely true that we need to discuss, critique, encourage, and preserve openness in education. But I think there are two mistaken assumptions in the above excerpt. One is that openness only means something if it is driven by ideology. Does healthcare reform advocacy only mean something if it’s driven by moral rather than economic arguments (ideological rather than pragmatic)? Just as the principles of healthcare reform could be legitimately grounded in utilitarian considerations, so too could openness in education. The moral arguments can hold weight as well, but it would be a mistake to say that one or the other is the only meaningful foundation for reform.

The other mistaken assumption is that pragmatic definitions of openness are driven by convenience. For better or for worse, we live in a world where the gears in the machine of progress and innovation are institutional. Yes, the functional unit of the gear (the cogs) are the individual actors, and there is a place for ideology within those actors. But on the world stage, the most basic units are institutions, and the torque needed to move the machine must be applied to the gear, not the cog.

It is simply a fact that many institutions targeted for reform by the open education movement can’t effectively make or act on an ideological principle of openness- and because of this reality, that emerges from the very nature of institution, pragmatic formulations of openness are necessary to reorient the gears in the machine towards more effective institutional policies and practices. That is to say, just as cogs can’t help but be connected to the motion of the gear, actors within institutions can’t help but be subject to the operational principles of the institution. And since this is where advocacy for openness must be targeted, this is what must inform the formulation of any principles of openness.

There’s nothing convenient or easy in taking a pragmatic approach to advocating reform. If anything, pragmatism requires more effort through the constant reinterpretation of your position, analyzing where you want to go and what is feasible, where the low hanging fruit are, which principles are more immediately vital, and so on, while the ideologue gets to raise the same banner and start the same chant at every opportunity. And while that ideological chant is important in many ways, including in building community and maintaining a shared vision for the future, advocacy for openness at the institutional level is most effective (that is, results in the most utility) without banners and chants.

In short, my argument is that pragmatic advocacy for openness is more effective than ideological advocacy (when directed at institutions) and leads to increased utility resulting from the implementation of “open” principles.

If you agree (or think I’m completely wrong), I’ll be monitoring the comments. You can also send me an email at akozak at creativecommons dot org or (sometimes) find me on twitter at @alexkozak.

A Peer 2 Peer University co-founder recently posed this question to our tight knit community of volunteers: “Where are we in terms of P2PU’s evolution (one guy with his shirt off, or three people falling over themselves?)” Of course, this question was in reference to this infamous YouTube video of the Sasquatch music festival where, if you haven’t seen it, one lone naked dude starts an awesome dance party. I have to say, that after our inaugural workshop last week in Berlin, I think we’re past the point of three people falling over themselves. We were probably (definitely) in that phase during the pilot, where we stumbled through our courses, attempting to cohere and make sense of things, but without the glue to pull it all together. Even after the pilot and before the workshop, we sort of looked back and saw the different pieces and couldn’t quite put it together in our heads. For one thing, we didn’t know each other. Instead of a face without a name, it was more like an email without a face, anonymous @ placeholders populating our inboxes. Secondly, we knew we were scattered around the globe, which somehow deepened the mental disconnect. And finally, though we all had different reasons for volunteering, I suspect most of us had joined thinking it would simply be a fun experiment. Sure, why not organize a course online? It’s only six weeks of my time. An online book club? Sounds fun, and most importantly, noncommittal. If the pilot tanks (or even if it doesn’t), we can always pull out. We’re only volunteers after all. At least, that’s how I felt.

Then the P2PU workshop transpired. But before I dive into that, let me give newbies some background into what P2PU is, and what it’s all about (or at least, has become). I think Larry hit the nail on the head when he said that, “P2PU is the social learning wrapper around OER.” More elaborately stated, “The mission of P2PU is to leverage the power of the Internet and social software to enable communities of people to support learning for each other. P2PU combines open educational resources, structured courses, and recognition of knowledge/learning in order to offer high-quality low-cost education opportunities. It is run and governed by volunteers.” It’s an idea that was dreamed up and shaped by five founders a year or so ago, that materialized into an initiative called Peer 2 Peer University, manifesting itself in both virtual (p2pu.org) and physical (p2pu.org/Team) forms. We launched the pilot with seven courses (seven+ volunteer course organizers, plus volunteers around tech and admin issues) on 09.09.09. The pilot ran for six weeks, during which time we saw a good number of participants drop off like flies. The majority of our participants had full time jobs, were full time moms or dads, or were otherwise engaged with non-virtual life. There was also the issue of multiple tech platforms (blogs, wikis, etc.) which not all of us or our participants were fully familiar or comfortable with. Basically, it was a true pilot, from start to finish.

So we learned a lot about what didn’t work, but how to transform that knowledge into progress?

Photo by John Britton CC BY-SA

Well, with one awesome facilitator to keep us on target and another one to keep us moving forward, we put our heads together and brainstormed our way through four intense days of workshop. We set the agenda on the first day in post-its–the Wall of Ideas–and then proceeded to take the wall apart piece by piece in break-out sessions in the days ensuing. Personally leery of group work, I was at first skeptical about these group sessions, where we were split off into three groups of four–how much could we really accomplish with three disparate group resolutions? How much consensus could we really reach? And wouldn’t we end up hating each other in the end having to work, live, and play with each other? (Especially me with my penchant for disliking most people upon first meeting?)

First impressions, even if they are unpleasant (which they weren’t), don’t last long when you have a group of truly genuine, intelligent, and like-minded people together in one space for four days. Maybe it was Berlin, or the uber hip design space we were working in, or the fact that we all cared about the basic innovative idea of P2PU (peers learning from peers outside the ivy walls of tradition)–whatever it was, and as cheesy as it may sound, we truly connected. There was not one person who came out of that workshop who was skeptical of what we had accomplished or where we were headed. Some of us may have started out that way, myself included, but by the end we were ready to change the world, or at least the unbounded universe of education.

Photo by John Britton CC BY-SA

It was amazing how much consensus we reached after the hours of discussion in groups and report-backs to the group at large, how much concrete progress we made in terms of objectives and volunteered tasks to achieve those objectives. I think the moment when I knew I was part of one of the most functional groups of people I have ever worked with was near the end on Saturday during the tech session. John got up after our report-backs for what we’d like to see created (because the idea of casual changes to an existing platform did not even cross our minds) and laid out a schedule of deadlines and feedback dates where this was all going to be implemented. My jaw dropped–really? Since when did developers ever set deadlines like this, and since when did those deadlines ever come to mean anything? Especially volunteer developers? I was floored. I think we all were, not to mention incredibly humbled by this collective vision that had somehow coalesced from our individual ambitions and presented itself to us unawares.

I may sound like a giant cheese ball, but I really, truly appreciated the presence of every single person I met in Berlin. Throughout the group discussions and individual conversations I had with people, not to forget the dinners and yes, not entirely sober dance sessions, I really got to know each and every P2PU volunteer as more than just an @ placeholder, and as someone who was contributing to some larger effort just like me, on an entirely voluntary basis. I think in the end that is the crux of P2PU, that it’s made up of and run by volunteers–people who are willing to risk their time and effort to realize a vision that may not be realizable.

There are various theories as to why this happens in groups, one of which we discussed over our last dinner–that a part of a person’s brain shuts off when she or he feels part of a larger group effort, essentially positing that some part of her nature is satisfied that was previously working to be satisfied (maybe?)–but theorizing aside, P2PU is a lot more concrete and unidirectional than it once was. We have a real agenda and a community vision, and we’re headed towards it. I’d say that makes us more than three people falling over themselves. We’re somewhere in between three people and the awesome dance party that erupts at the end. We’re in the growing stages, and I’m willing to stick around ’til the end, if there is such a thing.

Photo by kiyanwang CC BY-NC-SA

1. Define “educational use” for me. Does it include education taking place outside of formal educational situations? Do you have to be a “qualified educator” (or an “enrolled student” or an “accredited institution”) in order to enjoy this right? I have never seen a non-discriminatory definition for “education.” In a world of rapidly evolving educational practices and in desperate need for alternative pathways to educational attainment, it seems quite foolish to define education in any narrow sense.

2. Define an “educational resource” for me. In my experience, anything can be an educational resource, properly contextualized and presented. Even the most crassly commercial product can be easily converted to “educational material” if the subject at hand is mass merchandizing, popular culture, or any number of other relevant disciplines of inquiry. Given this context-dependence, we should reject out of hand any attempt to lock “educational” resources into a specific, and almost certainly highly restrictive and archaic, form and function.

3. A fair use determination, even if we somehow capitalize on that capacity within some “educational” safe-harbor, is necessarily subjective and always carries some risk. It is highly doubtful that most risk-averse institutions will support such uses as a matter of course.

4. Even if we enjoyed broader fair use considerations, fair use is not a free ticket to do whatever you want with a resource, nor is it available to everyone on the globe. At best, fair use gives you some limited capacity for copying and sharing, and even more limited capacity for re-use, and then only in the select few countries that permit such uses What makes open educational resources (OER) interesting and powerful is the explicit permission to adapt, translate, and otherwise customize and improve the works. Creative Commons licenses are the only globally standardized tools that enable these uses to be made easily and transparently by anyone, anywhere.

I suspect that many people who espouse this desire for universal “educational fair-use rights” are basing this desire on a feeling that education is different, somehow. In education, people like to share. In education, the value of a resource is enhanced by increased use, adaptation, and customization to local needs. I agree. And this is why Creative Commons is the perfect solution to overcoming the copyright barriers that prevent these activities. As an opt-in system, we don’t need to argue with people who find all-rights-reserved copyright to be necessary for their work, such as many artists, musicians, and others in the creativity business. As a system that builds on top of copyright, we provide a mechanism for people to build a global education commons while respecting the rights of others. And as a global standard, Creative Commons transcends the diversity and incompatibilities inherent in the laws of the many different countries around the world.

The Internet, which obviously facilitates the sharing and adaptation that we desire, is a global medium – we need a global legal infrastructure to make it work. Creative Commons provides that infrastructure. Anything else is just so much hot air.

Do textbooks enhance the quality of education?

Evidence strongly suggests that the average textbook, as currently constructed, is not a high quality resource. Several studies, beginning in the 1980’s, have elaborated on this evidence, concluding that the textbook is a hopelessly low quality educational resource. Low quality because of the way textbooks are written and processed; hopelessly low quality because the existing process of textbook creation is enforced by state policies. This process is known as the state textbook adoption process.

K-12 textbooks are not generally written by experts or even teachers; rather, they are written by teams of anonymous writers from development houses. According to The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, textbooks are “hurriedly put together by teams of hack writers from ‘development houses,’ known as ‘chop shops’.”  The identities of the writers remain largely undisclosed, and they are not the university professors often cited as contributors. In fact, several professors who have been cited as contributors to popular textbooks deny ever having read or seen the textbooks.   Experts are also not involved in reviewing the quality of textbooks, such as checking for accuracy of facts. This is because there is no review process for quality.

Instead, the review process is grounded in the textbook adoption process that is mandated in twenty-one plus states. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute defines it as, “The process, in place in twenty-one states, of reviewing textbooks according to state guidelines and then mandating specific books that schools must use, or lists of approved textbooks that schools must choose from.” Due to conflicting political and ideological views, state guidelines are fashioned to please a wide spectrum of demands regarding inclusion and exclusion of content. These demands result in a second set of guidelines from textbook publishing companies, who preempt the adoption process with their own checklists to speed things along. These checklists are not checking for quality; they are checking for politically correct representation of content and groups of people, in addition to checking for “morally questionable” facts, regardless of whether such inclusions or exclusions are accurate portrayals of the subject matter. Furthermore, California and Texas, as the most populous states, are the two major players in textbook adoption, which means their guidelines affect the majority of textbooks in America, as the market depends on their approval. Four publishing companies constitute 70% of this market, having built long-standing partnerships with the states. This makes it incredibly difficult for alternative textbook companies with a focus on quality to break in to the market.

The U.S. History textbook is a prime example and outcome of the textbook adoption process. The U.S. History textbook is subject to two major problems. In a testimony to the Senate in 2003, the American Textbook Council  summed up these problems as “dumbing down” and “increasing content bias and distortion.” According to the council, current history textbooks are more concerned with capturing and sustaining short attention spans than with relaying accurate and compelling history. They have become “picture and activity books instead”, with the actual text as the supplemental component. The language of the text itself is grossly simplistic, catering to all reading levels, rather than relaying events in compelling narrative. Instead, “states often apply “readability” formulas to ensure that textbooks use simpler words and phrases, resulting in a lowest-common-denominator approach.” The second problem is that history textbooks are censored with “increasing content bias and distortion.” Content bias and distortion refers to the differing political ideologies competing for inclusion and exclusion of facts. Since different people and groups have different ideas about what should or shouldn’t be included as relevant to U.S. or world history, the contents of history textbooks are screened and then screened again to appease all parties. This process not only produces mediocre results, but a politically crafted history of the United States, which often glosses over or even entirely omits relevant facts while elaborating on inoffensive details. However, since “one person’s distortion is another’s correction,” the details actually included in history textbooks are either highly insignificant or so generalized that they fail to deliver the meanings of those details in context.

None of this is evidence that textbooks enhance the quality of education. On the contrary, all evidence affirms that the majority of textbooks are low to mediocre quality resources. Such resources run the risk of decreasing, rather than increasing, the quality of education. In fact, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores in math and reading were found to be generally lower in textbook adoption states.

Do teachers and students know how to use the textbook?

If we believe that educational quality will suffer without textbooks, we are also assuming that teachers and students know to use textbooks. In other words, we are assuming that teachers know how to effectively leverage textbooks as teaching resources and students know how to learn from them as learning resources. For teachers, effectively leveraging textbooks requires more than simply assigning reading and lecturing on that reading during class–it means using the textbooks as a starting point for other perspectives and educational resources. For students, learning from textbooks requires more than just reading the textbooks–it means understanding and retaining what they have read. The National Center for Research on Teacher Learning reports that,

“For centuries educators asumed that student learning consisted of rote memorization of new knowledge–students listened to lectures and read books, their progress measured by their ability to recite what they had heard and read. But research in the past 20 years demonstrates that another form of learning is also important–the learning that occurs when instruction is inquiry-oriented, encouraging learners to actively think about and try out new ideas in light of their prior knowledge, to personally transform the knowledge for their own use, and to apply it in other situations.”

Teachers effectively leverage textbooks when they use them as starting points, subsequently utilizing other educational resources (which include materials, tools, media, and techniques) that instigate inquiry, activity, and creativity. “Mere regurgitation of facts and figures… is not sufficient for in-depth understanding” (How Teachers Learn to Engage Students in Active Learning). On the other hand, actively engaging students while exposing them to other perspectives helps them to fully grasp and retain what they have read.

Unfortunately, most teachers and students do not know how to use textbooks in this manner. Most teachers do little more than assign reading, only to lecture later on the same reading, and as a result, most students do not retain what they have read, if they have read at all. According to The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, “Shadow studies, which track teachers’ activities during the school day, suggest that 80 to 90 percent of classroom and homework assignments are textbook-driven or textbook-centered. History and social studies teachers, for example, often rely almost exclusively on textbooks, instead of requiring students to review primary sources and read trade books by top historians.”

Further evidence suggests that this misuse of textbooks is affecting students’ performance. In a study on the impact of curriculum on achievement in twenty-five countries, Professor William Schmidt found that “textbook content in different nations correlated closely to what their children learned–and how they fared on tests.” Even though U.S. textbooks were hundreds of pages longer than other countries, U.S. students were still learning less. In History, especially, one of the most “textbook-heavy” subjects, “half of high school seniors scored “below basic”–the lowest outcome possible–on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in U.S. History.” (Too Little Too Late: American High Schools in an International Context)

But isn’t the California Digital Textbooks Initiative improving textbooks?

Among the plethora of new initiatives surrounding textbooks, the Free Digital Textbook Initiative in California is the most notable because of its ties to both state policy and alternative textbook publishing models. It is a plan heralded by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in response to the state’s economic crisis. The initiative provides for free digital textbooks for high school math and science, and lays out a set of state standards for those subjects. Content developers submit digital textbooks that are reviewed by teachers and experts in math and science to align to those standards.

The initiative’s appeal is that it purports to use a process different from traditional textbook adoption. Its initial phase boasts of alternative content developers, consisting of non-profits, such as the CK-12 Foundation, Connexions, Curriki, and individual authors. Content review to meet state standards is facilitated by the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN). In California’s press release on August 11, 2009, ten of the sixteen textbooks submitted were found to be acceptable, meeting 90% of the state’s standards.

The intent behind the initiative is a positive one, and the process thus described seems headed in the right direction. However, as it stands the initiative puts no real dent in California’s textbook adoption policy, as it becomes clear that none of these textbooks are required for districts to purchase and use. In order for materials to become a required text, they must meet every standard, including California’s social content standards, which none have been reviewed for.  For this review to occur, creators of the textbooks must go through the social content standard review process, which is not only costly and time consuming, but runs the risk of dumbing down their textbooks to the same level as currently required textbooks.

Even if we assume that somehow these textbooks will survive the reviews unscathed and maintain their existing levels of quality, nothing ensures their proper use in the classroom. With cut funding in the state, districts may be expected to access the texts only online, even when they don’t have computers for every student or the teacher/student training necessary to help them work with texts in digital formats. The initiative does not call for additional funding for hardware, training, or supplemental resources. Additionally, only textbooks go through the review process, which means that only textbooks can be required for use in districts. Other educational resources, such as digital materials and software, are never required statewide. Requiring only the digital textbooks and not the means to leverage them leaves teachers and students in pretty much the same boat as before, only this time without funding for the hard copies. Though the quality of textbooks may improve via this initiative, there is no guarantee that they will be used, or used properly. After all, the quality of instruction depends on more than just the textbook.

“Traditional textbooks have clearly failed students and instructors. Similarly, digital textbook trials that force a single format, device, or price point will also fail. No single e-reading format or device will ever satisfy all students.” –Eric Frank, Flatworld Knowledge

Conclusion

In conclusion, efforts are better spent building upon what we have learned about textbooks in the past few decades, instead of trying to save a dying resource. Textbooks may not need saving. Textbooks, as they currently stand, do not enhance the quality of education. They are outdated resources that have been enforced by outdated policies. Most teachers and students use the textbook as a crutch rather than a tool, and as studies show, this linear way of teaching has resulted in less learning and lower student performance. Though some current textbook initiatives may alleviate symptoms temporarily, they are essentially flogging the same tired mule. The future of education does not hold textbooks, at least in the traditional sense of textbooks; it holds the plethora of other resources that better serve it. We should focus on prioritizing the creation and adoption of these resources so that they are accessible, adaptable, and don’t fall into the same mediocre traps of the textbook.

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

[...]

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and math texts with free, “open source” digital versions.

With California in dire straits, the governor hopes free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Among the article’s interviewees is Neeru Khosla, co-founder of the non-profit group CK-12 Foundation, which develops “flexbooks” that can be adapted to state educational standards. Khosla explains the virtues of the flexbooks:

You can use them online, you can download them onto a disk, you can print them, you can customize them, you can embed video. When people get over the mind-set issue, they’ll see that there’s no reason to pay $100 a pop for a textbook, when you can have the content you want free.

The article uses terms like “digital textbooks,” “free courseware,” “open source,” and “open-content,” but what exactly do these terms mean? While there is reference to the adaptability and customization digital texts, the article does not explicitly mention copyright. Even if digital delivery of educational materials may solve some of the cost barriers of education, without an explicit understanding of terms like “open” and “free,” legal and social barriers to learning remain.

The fact that textbooks are simply “digital” or “available on the Internet” alone is not enough.  While there are various terms being used right now such as “digital textbooks” and “free courseware,” they do not necessarily refer to the same thing.  Digital and online learning materials are only truly open educational resources when they are licensed under an open license, such as the least restrictive Creative Commons license, CC BY, or released into the public domain. Only then will they be truly available for sharing, collaboration and reuse.

The road to a digital future for education is not without its bumps. Lewin brings up the issue of a the digital divide: “Not every student has access to a computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few districts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor.”

The real issue at stake is not just about lowering the economic costs of schooling, but instead the need to focus on increasing the accessibility of knowledge. In order for learning resources to be truly accessible, the issue is not just online vs. offline, digital vs. print. To reach their maximum social and educational potential, learning materials in the digital future will need to free from excessive copyright constraints in order to allow teachers and students the maximum freedom to legally share, modify, and improve upon them.

We need to think of Open Educational Resources as more than just textbooks in digital form. More than just delivery mechanisms for one-way knowledge transfer. How can the OER of the future be designed and licensed to maximize participation and collaboration? Open licensing of education resources is part of the solution. What do you envision for the future of open educational resources?

See also: Jane Park’s post from last September, “Back to School: Open Textbooks Gaining in Popularity.”