Re: copying, learning, and teaching

Russ Hunt (HUNT who-is-at academic.stu.StThomasU.ca)
Tue, 23 Sep 1997 10:42:47 AST

I'm so far behind in this wonderful conversation that I'm hesitant to
jump back in -- who knows what I've not yet read -- but Jay's and
Tim's exchange on textbooks pushes a hot button of mine.

Jay says he's just reviewed a paper which

> comes down rather heavily against the textbooks on a particular
> important syndrome, and I recommended the author/s consider why
> textbooks are as they are and not just how they differ from
> professional writing for experts. I thought one should consider the
> possible positive functions of their deviance. On the other hand I
> agree that deviance is in itself a problem; I do not think that
> reading a textbook in many fields really does introduce students to
> the actual disciplinary discourse, only to a discourse-type that
> exists only in textbooks.

Textbooks are a genre; that is, they are disciplined responses to a
recurrent rhetorical situation. They're not only _written_ in that
setting (to import a term from the other strand here); they're _read_
and _used_ in it. Everything about them tends toward becoming a
textoid (that is a piece of text which looks like social discourse,
but which doesn't exactly act like it). If you write a textbook
which doesn't _sound_ like that, it'll get edited till it does; if it
escapes editing it'll be _read_ that way. If you take a book that
wasn't "intended" as a textbook and treat it as one, it'll be read as
one. It will be, as Jay says, "a discourse-type that exists only in
textbooks."

Textbooks aren't reference books (though something published as a
textbook can be so treated). When they're so treated, they can, as
Jay say, "do some good anyway." But the institution of textbook is a
procrustean bed that can make even the most live and dialogic of
discourse look and feel monologic, static, and speaker- and addressee-
less.

-- Russ
__|~_
Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Aquinas Chair
St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 452-0424
Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615
E3B 5G3 CANADA ___|____|____|____/ hunt who-is-at StThomasU.ca
\ /
~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.StThomasU.ca/hunt/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~