Text-Books

The Rise of Co-operation in Canada

Text-Books written by Peter Sandiford

The Lambeth Proposals for the Reunion of Christendom

From The Canadian Forum, October, 1920, p. 10

Although the cost of text-books in a modern system is but an insignificant item in the total amount spent on education, ranging as it does from two to four per cent., the interest it arouses in any community is greater than that created by all the other expenditures put together. The reason is not far to seek. Text-books are frequently paid for directly by the parents; they are an obvious expense, and a direct tax is always more closely scanned than an indirect one. Even when the text-books are given to the pupils there is a sense of proprietorship in them which is altogether different from that felt for the school building and its furnishings. Small though the cost is, the importance of text-books as an instrument of education warrants an inquiry into their making.

The text-book problem is an old one. Before the invention of printing it was almost an insuperable one, the lot of writing out the text frequently falling to the student. Authorship in those times was not undertaken lightly; consequently the mediaeval text-books, considering the time of their compilation, were superior, script for script, to the ones of to-day. What modern text-books, for example, can compare with Priscian's Institntio de Arte Grammatica with Alcuin's De Dialectica, with Sacrobosco's Libellus de Sphaera, or with the De Musica of Boethius? Great numbers of copies of these excellent texts must have been made. A thousand copies of Priscian's Grammar are still extant. They all show rare pedagogical skill, a clear understanding of style, and an eager desire to keep abreast of the times. The use of them by the teachers is more open to criticism. Teaching in mediaeval times was an ill-developed art; it consisted largely of the dictation of the text-book. And this in spite of Varro's injunctions with regard to the teaching of grammar, applicable to other branches of learning as well, that the following functions be observed: (1) emendatio — the correction of the text; (2) lectio — accurate reading; (3) enarratio — exposition; and (4) judicium — criticism.

With the invention of printing, an art which enabled a thousand text-books to be produced where one had been produced before, the need for the dictation of the text disappeared. It almost seemed as if the occupation of the teacher were about to disappear. Conservative almost to a standstill he managed somehow to survive. Instead of dictating a text, he began to dictate notes about a text, and by the irony of fate this method still survives in our highest institutions of learning — the universities.

The problem of the text-book did not really become critical again until the 19th century, when the world tried its greatest social experiment — the education of everybody. Text-books by the million were required and fortune lay at the feet of successful author and enterprising publisher. Let it be said in defence of the private publisher that, on the whole, he rose to the occasion. Some really excellent text-books were produced at a time when the demand for them was so urgent, that whatever the publisher gave must needs be taken. The text-book industry became so profitable that hundreds were attracted into it and competition became keen. Whisperings of the dubious methods that some publishers used to get a particular text selected for schools began to be heard and in more than one case open bribery was proven.

[p. 11] What was to be done? An obvious way out of the difficulty thus created was for the state to undertake the publication of its text-books. California, for example, as early as 1885 began the compilation and publication of school text-books. It looked as if the final solution had been reached. Corrupt practices, however, soon crept in, and even when the practice appeared fair and above board, subtle cankers began to corrode the body politic. Californian production led to Californian authorship. Competition was eliminated and soon an absolute monopoly in the authorship, manufacture, and sale of text-books was created. The state of affairs would have been ludicrous if it had not involved millions of innocent children. California deliberately turned its back on books tested by time and in the fierce heat of competition, in favour of those by untried, incompetent, unknown local authors. Things reached such a pass that in 1903 the people demanded a change. The monopolists in charge gave way to this extent — they permitted the leasing of the plates of successful texts of private publishers. But state printing and binding were still insisted upon. Insidious evils crept in here. The state printing office became a sheltered home for many a party hack and ward heeler. The economies that should have ensued from quantity production in a non-competitive field failed to materialize. Text-books could only be manufactured below the cost of private production by using inferior paper and a still more inferior binding. The books really cost more, for they lasted less than one-fourth the time they ought to have done.

Since California's disastrous excursion into the field of state production of text-books many other plans have been tried. The one in Ontario is too well-known to need description. Ontario produces the cheapest text-books in the world. In regard to this, however, it should be borne in mind that the Province bears the cost of many books up to the produclion of the finished plates. The cost of authorship and of editorship is hidden away in provincial book-keeping. If proportionate shares of the salary of the permanent editor and the fees of authorship and casual editorship were added to the price of each book a different tale would be told. The printing of books by large firms at a minimum cost for the sake of the advertising it gives should also be taken into account.

While state production of text-books has many excellent features, it suffers from three grave defects. The first is that it inevitably limits the field from which books may be drawn by restricting the authorship to local men. It is inconceivable, for instance, that in Ontario, or even in Canada, we have the expert of experts in every field. Yet for all practical purposes competition by non-Canadian authors is eliminated so far as Canadian texts are concerned. Secondly, by the nature of the monopoly, only the inoffensive text-book can be chosen. A text-book that offends none is bound to be conservative in outlook and behind the times. New ideas are suspect; only the well-known and well-tried are given entrée into the schools. Thirdly, the uniform state text-book leads to uniform courses of study, uniform examinations — uniform everything. And this is just what we should not want. State uniformity in text-books and in courses of study is an anachronism. The world is a wonderfully variant place and no two people in it are alike. Industry and the professions, nay, life itself demands a variety of talents. What suits one person in one locality does not suit another person in another locality. Yet state production means state adoption, whereas, at its greatest extent, the unit of adoption should never be greater than the unit of local administration. One can only view with something akin to dismay the growth of sentiment in favour of a Canada-wide authorization of text-books.

"Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow,

Little frosty Eskimo."

as well as the little children of all our other multitudinous races and nationalities are to be cast into one mould — in the name of economy. What has ecomony to do with the question, when real and live personalities are at stake? Economy then becomes a vice, and in the long run proves disastrously expensive.

What is the remedy? While keenly aware of lions in the path, the writer humbly submits that some modification of the London (England) plan could be worked in Canada. London has a central teachers' library in which all texts of private publishers reaching a standard approved by an expert committee of selection, are placed. There are literally scores of readers, arithmetics, grammars, etc., in this library and all are authorized. A principal of a school wishing, say, to change his readers visits this library and examines all the readers on the shelves. He often seeks the co-operation of his staff in the work of selection. After careful study he selects the set which suits his pupils best and orders it through the Education Committee's purchasing bureau. Canvassing by publishers' agents is eliminated by the severity of the penalty attached to the practice. This is nothing less than the removal of every text of a guilty firm, no matter how excellent those texts may be, from the shelves of the library and from the authorized list. The risk is too great, so nobody runs it. The idea of a different set of texts in each of our schools seems too novel for Canada at present, yet all educational experts who have studied the London system report most favourably upon it. It is well, therefore, to keep at least an open mind on the question.

Peter Sandiford