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THE MICHIGAN DAILY
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23.1962
loss Views Chances
[)f Aiding Candidates
By MARTHA MacNEAL ----;-A
EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION:
. Drastic Changes Hit Textbook Field
I
"There is a growing feeling
among Voice Political Party mem-
bers that if a local candidate for
Congress would adopt a platform
calling for significant initiatives
in disarmament and the reduction
of cold war tensions, Voice would
contribute to his campaign in the
form of active political work,"
Robert Ross, '63, chairman of
Voice said yesterday.
This issue was discussed at the
open executive meeting of Voice,
held Tuesday and Thursday at
the Student Activities Bldg. Mem-
bers of the Executive Committee
attending were Martha Prescott,
'65, Nancy Hollander, '65, Richard
Magidoff, '63, Sharon Jeffrey, '63,
and Ross.
In addition, Ross said that an
Ann Arbor community group, Vot-
ers' Voice for Peace, has been at-
tempting to encourage a local
candidate to take such a position.
Discussion Group
Voice is planning to organize
two internal education studies
The first will be a discussion group
of Voice members meeting twice
monthly to consider the "Port
Huron Statement" issued by the
Students for a Democratic Society.
The 65-page statement at-
tempts to analyze the American
political and social system in such
a way as to help build a democrat-
ic, liberal, and radical social move-
ment.
Group To. Stage
Housing Protest
The Ann Arbor Fair Housing
Association will sponsor a vigil
at Monday's City Council meeting
to demonstrate support for the
passage of a fair housing ordi-
nance. The demonstration will be
held in front of the City Hall at
7:00 p.m., continuing until the
meeting is adjourned.
The second study will be carried
out by a research group working
on the problem of re-alignment of
the National political party sys-
tem. The findings' of this group will
be used by former' Daily Editor
Thomas Hayden, Grad., and Rob-
ert Haber, Spec., as material for
a book which they hope to pub-
lish next year in order to affect the
1964 conventions.
Education Reform
The Committee on the Univer-
sity will continue to study the
problem of reform of higher edu-
cation at Michigan, and will con-
centrate particularly on aiding
members of Voice who are on
Student Government Council in
the preparation of legislation.
Projects on civil liberties, stu-
dent rights, and speaker bans will
be continued. Voice will attempt
to demonstrate publicly the faults
of the present speaker policy by
bringing controversial speakers to
the University campus, and will
continue to spread literature con-
cerning the House Un-American
Activities Committee and civil
rights.
In the area of civil rights, some
Unievrsity students and Ann Arbor
residents are working on a tutor-
ial program for Negro and white
teenagers. Voice will probably join
the project once it has become
firmly established, Ross said.
Fair Housing
On the same issue, a demonstra-
tion for fair housing legislation
will be held by the Ann Arbor Fair
Housing Association outside the
Ann Arbor town hall at 7 p.m. on
Monday. Voice will also be selling
recordings of songs from Albany,
Ga., to raise money for the Stu-
dent Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee and its civil rights
projects.,
Some individual Voice members
are doing research on the possi-
bility of working with other state!
groups on the problem of migrant
workers.
By FRED M. HECHINGER
New York Times Education Writer
The textbook publishing indus-
try today is in a position compar-
able to that of the air craft indus-
try when it was confronted by the
changeover from piston engines to
jets.
Nationwide school reforms and
educational discoveries have
pushed textbook publishers to the
point of drastic changes. Demands
for higher standards of teachingI
have caused textbook innovations
that, according to one publisher,
might normally have taken at
least a generation.
There appears to be agreement
on only one point: the American
textbook and its market never
again will be as uncomplicated and
standardized as it has been for the
last thirty years. Instead of mas-
sive, profitable sales of a number
of so-called "basic" books, the
market will be fragmented, fast-
changing and far less predictbble.
Government Money
Individual publishers see these
changes either as a threat or an
opportunity. While all agree that
government research money will
have a decisive impact, they are
sharply divided on whether this is
a potential menace or a boon.
They point to the large number
of pre-school children who some
day will be captive customers, but
they also know that they may
have to spend larger sums than
ever before on research and the
replacement of obsolete books if
they are to survive the stiffening
competition. For they are com-
peting not only with one another
but with new technological teach-
ing aids, from television to teach-
ing machines.
Textbook publishers face all
these uncertainties with a back-
log of harsh criticism, ranging
from right-wing attacks on books
as too liberal to liberal charges
that publishers' fears of financial
:
loss have drained the texts of sub-
stance and controversy.
Most of all, publishers' repre-
sentatives complain, they face
stiff competition for - the budget
dollar at a time when classroom
shortages and inadequate teach-
ers' salaries are also making heavy
demands on taxpayers.
Today there are 172 textbook
publishing companies competing
for a total annual business of
about $336.6 million. Of this, the
elementary and high school busi-
ness, where the most important
and immediate changes are anti-
cipated, account for about $232
million.
While the total expenditure has
more than doubled in the last ten
years, the percentage of the total
school expenditure for textbooks,
though always small, has de-
creased as enrollments and costs
rose. At present it is just above
one per cent of the total, al-
though this public allotment is
often augmented by students' own
purchases.
Serious Complaints
Whatever the future, publishers
admit that they face it against
a background of serious com-
plaints.
Such critics as Albert Alexander,
until recently a textbook analyst
for the New York City schools,
have charged that books on his-
tory and other social studies have
avoided controversial issues so
carefully that they have "followed
a virtual manual for blandness."
These critics cite the gingerly
treatment of the Civil War, indi-
cated by the superficial fact that
most books refer to it as the War
Between the States, and to the
evasion of such national contro-
versies as the New Deal or the
conflict over the late Senator Jo-
seph R. McCarthy. Teachers of
English have said that anthologies
tend to omit playwrights Arthur
Miller and Tennessee Williams as
too controversial.
Horse Opera
In a recent critical analysis of
the coverage of the Reconstruc-
tion Period in high school text-
books, Mark M. Krug of the Uni-
versity of Chicago charged that
the presentation resembled West-
ern horse opera rather than schol-
arship.
Other critics have complained
that too many books are written
by authors or "teams" who mere-
ly imitate commercially success-
ful books put out by other publish-
ers, with resulting sameness among
most available books. Such groups
as the American Economic Asso-
ciation have criticized the loss of
solid economic content in books
that try to combine and, they
charge, water down all the social
studies. Geographers voice similar
complaints.
In reply, publishers say they are
being held responsible for the lack
of courage of their customers -
school boards and educators. Wil-
liam I. Jovanovich, president of
the Harcourt Brace & World Book
Co., said textbooks represented the
most convenient target for critics,
partly because they were "alien
products," made outside the com-
munity, and partly because they
were portable and easy to shoot at.s
Durability Is Objective r
Many industries have intro-X
duced built-in obsolescence intos
their product, but textbooks haver
been produced largely with ank
eye to durability. And many havet
outlasted their subject-matter use-E
fulness. Recent surveys by thef
United Parents Association in New
York City found science and math-x
ematics texts dating to 1935 still
in use.
Lee C. Deighton, vice president
of the Macmillan Co., said books
are adopted because they havet
more colored pictures than com-
peting books, because of the color
of the paper, the depth of the
margins, the attractiveness of theI
covers, the strength of the bind-
ing. At one point, said anothert
publisher, books with nylon bind-1
ing were turned down by the
cotton-producing South.
"The pressure is on," said War-
ren Blaisdell, president of Blaisdell1
Publishing Company, a division ofe
Random House. "Parents demand
to know why their children are not
allowed to use good books, which
help get children in other statesi
into college."
New Day Dawning1
"The day when textbooks are
dominated by lay school board
members and political pressures
are coming to a close," he said.
The driving force behind this
change is curriculum reform.
Since the establishment of the
Commission on Mathematics in
1955 by the Carnegie Corp. of1
New York, reform groups have
been presenting the schools with
new approaches to mathematics
teaching. Jerrold Zacharias, phy-
sicist at the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology, has set sim-
ilar reform plans in motion in
physics. Two large national groups
are at work on chemistry and
another in biology.
More recently, economics teach-
ing and English instruction have
joined the movement. Foreign
languages have been in a con-
stant state of flux, ever since the'
armed. forces, during the war in-
troduced the "new American
method" of teaching largely
through the spoken word, at least
for beginners.
Variety Indicated
Most of the publishers agreed
that textbooks of the future must
implement the various reform
trends, satisfy the more conserva-
tive, the experimental and the
"far-out" teachers of varying
abilities.
The compromise appears to be
the use of basic textbooks, ac-
companied by clusters of special
books, usually paperbacks specially
prepared to accompany the text.
Doubleday and Company has pro-
vided a "cluster" of paperbacks
to supplement new science cur-
riculums.
This "cluster" system also may
provide the answer to controver-
sial issues. Edward Booher, presi-
dent of McGraw-Hill, pointed to
a new basic text on American
politics, just published by his com-
pany, which is accompanied by
twenty five separate case study
pamphlets. They include "An All-
Negro Ticket in Baltimore," "The
Nomination of 'Chip' Bohlen" and
"Oklahoma Goes Wet," along with
other controvery-charged cases.
Schools may take them or leave
them.
Bitter Feud
In some areas the change is
likely to be accompanied by bitter
feuds, partly because the profes-
sional educators are resisting
change, partly because long prac-
tice has entrenched existing books
and methods.
I IMELITEIISI
Reading instruction may ' be e
among the most explosive. In ar
recent analysis, Bruno Bettelheim,r
psycologist and education expertt
at the University of Chicago, sum-t
med up criticism of current booksk
by saying that many contain no-
thing the child has not knownk
all along without having to readr
about it." The phrase "Jump, Ted.
Jump! Jump! Jump." is hardly8
news to the child."c
Since the majority of early read-r
ing books are based on a standard
word list, imposed by educators
on publishers, mass-obsolesence of
this entire category of books maya
become even more drastic than in
other fields.
Some impatient teachers havet
published their own textbooks to
implement experiments in the
teaching of reading. Book pub-
lishers are getting ready fore
change. "We are watching them1
very intently," said Craig T. Senft,t
executive vice president of Holt,I
Rinehart and Winston, Inc. "WeI
expect to produce books, regard--1
less of past methods, as soon as<
the new methods seem successful."
Senft said "the next volcano"
in the schools-and therefore in
the textbook industry- will be1
in the social studies. "The Birchers
merely scratched the surface,"
with criticism along super-patriot-
ism lines, he said. The real
changes will come about because
"stress on specific subject matter
will return," he predicted.
Leadership Predicted
"Attempts in the past to blend
the various social studies-history,,
geography, economics-were not
very successful," he said. "Geo-
graphy is in for a resurgence, and,
the universities are beginning to
correct the lack of competent geo-
graphers."
More, than in the past, he said,
publishers, to remain competitive,
will have to try to anticipate the
direction education is going to
take, instead of following trends.
One publisher referred to such
new materials as educational films
and "programmed instruction" for
use in so-called teaching machines
or self-teaching books, such as
Doubleday's TutorTexts, a book
version of the machine. Program-
med learning presents to the stu-
dent carefully prepared sequences
and offers various ways, some
mechanical or even electronic, of
finding out whether he is giving
the right answers.
Hardware Idea
Although book publishers are
skeptical of the machine or "hard-
ware" idea, they are afraid not
to keep up with it.
But the most controversial as-
pect of the problem is the role of
government and the foundations.
Jovanovich is openly critical.
"Most of the reforms sponsored
by these funds," he said, "aim at
the upper 20 per cent of students
and forget the great mass of
children." Outside dollars, he said,
"make publishers compete with
production of materials which are
not in the public domain, and if
we do, there remains the question
whether communities will pick up
the tab for the experimental ma-
terials after the government pulls
out."
Provide Consultants
He pointed to the expense in-
volved in the re-training of teach-
ers, where the government does
not pay for it, and the question
whether publishers can afford, and
should be required to provide con-
sultants to schools.
"In the end, we'll have some
'excellence texts' and others for
the mass of students, and critics
will point at the latter to show-
rightly-that they are not scholar-
ly," he said.
Involved in the controversy are
these facts:
Revise Course
The Government, through the
National Defense Education Act
and the National Science Founda-
tion, and private foundations have
spent millions of dollars on the
establishment of commissions to
revise the curriculum and, later, to
retain teachers. In most instances
textbooks, experimentally rather
than commercially produced, have
been the result.
Some of the experimental books
have been taken over by com-
mercial publishers, giving them the
benefit of publicly financed re-
search. In the case of the biology
curriculum revision, three experi-
mental books have been put out.
At present, with the American
Textbook Publishers Institute act-
ing as the broker, the biologists
are accepting open bids.
"Only three publishers will get
the texts," Jovanovich said." "Isn't
this government interference?"
Public Finance
By contrast, the various math-
ematics reform groups, also pub-
licly financed, have thrown all
their experimental work in the
public domain. This has led to the
publication of a great many new
books and less hostility on the part
of the publishers.
The government and foundation
role, however, also has strong sup-
porters.
"It had to be done, and nobody
but the government could have
done it," Blaisdell said. "For one
thing, educators don't listen to
publishers."
Teacher-Prof
Rourke calls this the process of
making new books and metiods
"teacher-proof." One of the grav-
est dangers to school reform is
merely giving in to public pressure
for "something new" without mak-
ing sure that the teachers under-
stand what they are doing, he said.
Otherwise, he warned, the reforms
will fail and the reformers,
through no fault of their own,
will be blamed.
"It's very easy to say, 'Let them
study calculus in high school,"
but the fact is that many high
school mathematics teachers have
never studied calculus," he said.
Whatever the disagreements, the
consensus is that, as education be-
comes more quality minded, suc-
cessful book publishing must keep
this in mind.
Copyright, 1962, The New York Times
Compare Retail Text Prices
Of 'U,WSU Booksellers
(Continued from Page 1)
Moll
ii!
Out-of-Stock Books
N
Arriving Daily
AEW and USEE
at
ULRICH'is
Ann Arbor's Busy Book Store
)
three blocks apart, is able to sat-
isfy about 98 pir cent of student
textbook needs, Haskins estimates.
They run short (during registra-
tion period) on about seven per
cent of the 2,600 titles stocked.
The store is open only to WSU
students and faculty.
The WSU bookstore grew out
of a one-time high school book-
store that existed before WSU
on the same location. The book-
store simply switched to college
operation when WSU moved into
the spot.
In addition to the university op-
erated bookstore, there is another
privately owned store nearby that
caters to students' non-course re-
quired reading and handles the
overflow textbook business.
Handles Used Books
At the University,thekclosest
thing to a bookstore is the Stu-
dent Book Exchange, operated by
Student Government Council,
which handles only used books.
The major problem in the SBX,
however, is that students want
their money the moment they sell
their books, Christopher Cohen,
'64, SBX manager, said.
The SBX does not pay for books
until they are sold. But students
both buying and' selling texts can
save substantial amounts over
bookstore prices, according to Co-
hen.
Sell Book
Taking the example of a $10
book (which costs $10.40 with
sales tax) Cohen pointed out that
a student could probably sell the
book for about two-thirds the cost,
$6.00, after the SBX's 10 per cent
fee. The buyer would probably pay
$6.67 with no sales tax.
In contrast, Cohen noted that
the bookstores usually pay only
about 50 per cent of $5 on a $10
book and sell it for three quarters
of the price plus sales tax or $7.80.
Thus the seller at SBX would like-
ly make $1 and the buyer save
$1.13. But the seller must wait un-
til the book is sold before he can
collect his money.
On pricing policies in general,
one bookstore manager comment-
ed, "We work on a very small
profit margin and there is tre-
mendous competition.
Charge Same Price
"We all charge the same prices
for new books. We have to; it's
required by the publisher."
Another full-time bookstore em-
ployee said that variation in the
prices of books from store to store
is largely due to price changes
from one semester to the next. If
one store has a stock of books
purchased at the former price, it
sells the books at the lower, old
price until the stock is exhausted.
The book store manager point-
ed to a recent article in a trade
journal praising Ann Arbor book-
stores for their stock and service
and calling the city one of the
best-serviced book centers in the
country.
Small Profit Margin
Cohen, who has done research
into the possibility of establishing
a student bookstore, said, "These
bookstores do work on a small
profit margin. I've seen some of
the textbook invoices and the mar-
gin isn't very great, usually around
20 per cent out of which they have
to pay all their expenses, includ-
ing freight from the publisher to
them.,
"But any means that would low-
er the cost of books to students is
justified.
"A University bookstore could
confine itself to just selling those
books for courses where several
hundred students are enrolled,"
he added.
Used To Exclude
Cohen, viewing the Regental
policy, noted that it has been used
only to exclude a student book-
store and that other businesses
function within the University de-
spite the bylaw. He pointed to the
Michigan Union, which, he said,
offers tax free competition to local
restaurants as do the snack bars
in Mary Markley Hall and South
Quadrangle.
He also noted the sale of drugs
by University Health Service.
"A student bookstore is the only
thing I know of that has been re-
jected by the Regents on these
grounds."
Group Attends
Annual Retreat
Twenty-seven University facul-
ty members and their guests at-
tended the ninth annual Univer-
sity Cancer Retreat at Baldwin,
Mich., Friday.
During the two-day retreat, the
group heard professional lectures
on cancer and participated in day-
and-night discussions of the prob-
lem areas presented.
Guest speakers were Dr. Jacob
Furth of Columbia University's
College of Physicians and Sur-
geons; Dr. Walter E. Heston of
the National Cancer Institute.
.1
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PETITIONING OPEN for
S.G.C. Standing Committees
Committee on the National Student Assn.
One seat
Committee on Student Concerns
Three seats
Committee on Student Activities
Two Seats
Petitions will be available
from the Administrative Secretary,
1546 Student Activities Building
on Monday Sept. 24.
a1
Sunday,
October 14, 1962
Hill Auditorium
--8:00 p.m.-
TICKETS:
$1.50-$2.50-$3.50
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