The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Here’s a link to a post about a quote from Richard Feynman, concerning math textbooks.
Richard Feynman was a brilliant physicist, physics professor and Nobel Prize winner, and author of the wonderfully titled, “What do You care what Other People Think?”
His iconoclastic way of thinking and expressing himself got him in a lot of “trouble” from small-minded government and educational functionaries.
But he still remained Richard Feynman. And they remained small-minded government and educational functionaries.
Math textbooks, then as now, are mostly written to get contracts from these functionaries. They are seldom reviewed by competent parties.
But your government wouldn’t accept fraud, waste, or abuse, would it?
Check out the article.
I haven’t noticed what’s going on with math textbooks as we’ve got several resources we use in our homeschooling (Math Mammoth, (Singapore) Primary Mathematics, TimeZ Attack game, etc.) and none are school texts but I did pick up several school science texts this summer. They were gr. 1, grade 3, grade 7 or 8 and a college text. What a waste! Each book covered the same subjects in the same sloppy way. It seemed that the end goal was to produce children who were not only bored silly with science but had a very poor understanding of it. I’m generally convinced that if it seems a certain way it’s probably meant to be a certain way.