Response to "Math textbooks and the way they may position their readers"

The reading this time describes how math textbooks position students based on the will of the author(s), and I would even add the curriculum. Prior to this teacher education program, I did not consider any of the aforementioned aspects of a textbook. All that mattered to me was whether or not the textbook that I was most certainly renting from the school (textbooks are expensive, people) was mostly intact and not scrawled on to death by my predecessors. If a textbook was in pristine condition and modern like every other textbook I grew accustomed to, it was all good. However, now that I've been pushed to think a little deeper about the textbooks in our students' hands, there are certainly new perspectives on how they are carefully designed to subtly sway the students to think about mathematics in a certain way, but also to sway how teachers do things. Although I have no proof, I suspect that despite teachers being paragons of critical thought and inspection, they are typically so busy that they would be susceptible to the conniving ways of the textbook authors. Yes, you "will" do mathematics this way. It is "certain" that the mathematics in the textbook you are looking at are in line with what the curriculum you to teach, so get to it! These are silly attempts at emulating the examples of high modality that were provided by the reading, but honestly the reading has a point -- there's a weird gaslighting effect at play here that I never considered deeply until now. Of course I wouldn't have as a student, because I was just so preoccupied with surviving and thriving that I placed my faith in the textbook in front of me, as well as the teacher who assigned and interpreted the textbook their own way. There are other examples along the same vein of gaslightery, whether it's through the imperatives used to guide a student's actions, the question figures that intend to inspire self-insertion, or explicitly telling students to think, discuss, and write about answers. Again, me as a former student did not consider this, so I'd consider the all-star line up of Math Makes Sense, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill Ryerson as very effective at embedding the gaslights.

As an aspiring teacher, I feel that the level of design focused on the authors' central goal of positioning students to do mathematics their way is at a similar level of intricacy as a casino. To digress a little bit, did you know that every aspect of a casino is designed with the goal of keeping their gamblers inside for as long as possible? There are no windows or clocks because they want to warp people's perception of time (seeing the sunlight peeking out is not ideal for business). The air circulation works optimally to ensure a good smell, and other design strategies are employed. Reading this article gave off that vibe of hyperintentionality.

Regarding the reasons for and against using textbooks: my general stance is that textbooks, like every other mathematics education resource (e.g. Khan Academy, Paul's Math Notes, a random YouTube tutorial series made by a kind and dedicated person with a heavy accent, mathsisfun.com -- you name it), can be useful provided that the teacher curates the things in there. If we're given nice templates, lesson examples, and practice questions to just tell the students to do without making printouts or spending hours crafting the perfect questions, why wouldn't we work off the shoulders of these textbook authors? That being said, I still think there is a sad dynamic where textbook authors spend months padding the living daylights out of a textbook with learning strategies, contexts and connections to real life and history, worked examples, colour coding, answer keys, formula sheets, practice questions, possible labs and project ideas yet 99% of teachers will likely avoid certain parts of a textbook with a 10-metre pole. When's the last time any of us actually flipped to a "Project Idea" in a math textbook because the teacher wanted us to do it? Maybe someone out there did it recently, but I don't remember ever doing it in my life. So while the textbook could be manipulative to students, this is based on the assumption that they are not being guided along by their teacher who is likely picking and choosing what parts of the textbook to subject their students to. Also consider the sheer length of the average textbook; I've been informed that they are getting shorter over time (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm mainly going off memory from lecture today), but even then I don't think any teacher is going to get through the whole thing within the time they are given... unless they were sadists.

If I were to surmise some counterpoints against using textbooks, they're mostly within the realm of "be cautious" and not "don't use them". This is addressed above for the most part, but I'll also add that many of these textbooks are 1) old, and 2) are written by people from multiple provinces, both of which contribute to a dissonance of standardization with the actual curriculum being taught now. These textbooks typically have copyrights that go back to the era of traditional mathematics education, yet we have all these fancy new BC curricular things to worry about. So the note of caution here is that while we can use textbooks, our job as teachers is to be ever so vigilant about how to translate it into the curriculum at hand. Another deterrent to textbook usage is also cost; if the school's ability to procure books is at direct odds with other financial demands on the school, then there are school-specific tradeoffs to consider.

I also found it interesting that UBC's mathematics department, at least for calculus I to IV and I believe the proofs course, have started making their own online textbooks. This shows that the role of textbooks is becoming more prevalent as a vehicle to guide how teachers/departments want to teach material, but I suspect there is also a recognition that 1) the monopoly on textbooks has gone on too long, 2) syncing up the textbook with what is actually being taught is important, and 3) textbooks are still important and desirable in many schooling contexts as a resource and vehicle for learning. I completely agree with these sentiments, and if I have the time and energy to make a free, open-source mathematics textbook and resource hub for BC math teachers, I would definitely do so in an attempt to give the textbook industry a major wake-up call. Finally, while there is a trend of textbooks becoming increasingly depersonalized and decontextualized, that really just translates to more work for teachers... like myself. I can't say I enjoy that aspect of the recent textbook developments, but there is a nice benefit of teacher autonomy here where we can decide the personalization and contextualization for the students.