User:Biff alcatraz

... I've created this page so I can contribute to the "Textbooks" project. This probably isn't the place to put notes, but that's probably what I'll do for a while.


 * There doesn't seem to be a page on Clear Writing on Wikipedia. While this topic might be hard to define, Clear writing is very important to government, the Military, business, marketing, technology and Science -- as well as education and academic disciplines. These other areas expect that there are guidelines to follow, just as there are guidelines in their own professional areas.


 * The Textbook page is better the way it stands, than contributors now think it is. I think it lacks some important major sections, though.


 * Not all Texbooks are the same -- we should define different kinds of Textbooks and textbook audiences.


 * We should also describe the general editorial process that publishers follow, to produce a textbook product -- it is not the process that produces popular books, tradebooks or scholarly books.


 * We should tie the creation of the modern textbook 100 years ago, to the development of Public Education policy (John Dewey). This is VERY important. This is where the modern textbook came from.


 * The military services have also affected textbook development and content -- manuals and guides written for sometimes semiliterate enlisted personnel have been very successful, and lessons learned there have carried over into some of the more useful textbooks written in the last 50 years.


 * The College Textbook is broken today because our Public University system is broken. Instructors have no security. They are not trained to instruct. They do not value books, but use them just because they THINK they should use them. Nearly all College authors lack the interest or the skill to write useful textbooks for their target student readers ... this is not a complaint; just an observation. The Textbook industry has evolved to survive on that one author in five or six who actually can write a useful book.