Wednesday, February 26, 2003

Beware the Ides of Editing

My history professor was on a huge, bitter tear this morning, which I enjoyed. Evidently the editor of the textbook he's writing wants him to use phrases like "whopping big." She is apparently concerned about appealing to the market.

What market is this, may I ask? The market of cynical high school graduates? Kids know when they're being patronized. Running across "whopping big" in a textbook is not likely to impress them. It's going to make them snort and stop reading because the book is too dumb to be bothered with.

No, to really appeal to a college audience, my prof needs to write his history book in the form of an FAQ. He can leave out the chapter and just write possible test questions and their answers, i.e.:
Q. Who was the first emperor of Rome?
A. Octavian Augustus, 31-14 B.C.
Q. How did he come to power?
A. He staged a civil war in order to avenge the murder of his uncle, Julius Caesar. He defeated Pompey in 27 B.C. and assumed the leadership of the empire.

And so on and so forth. Because frankly, this is all the information that college students are looking for from a textbook. They don't want details; they want a bare overview of bite-sized facts that they can spout in those long, uncomfortable pauses after a prof asks a question. If they need more, they can actually do the twelve hundred pages of secondary reading—fat chance—, but a "textbook" (as opposed to a text not written for the classroom) is just for skimming and highlighting and nothing more. He's deluded if he thinks otherwise. And I think, somewhere in his academic's heart of hearts, he knows, because I've taken four classes from him and he's never assigned a textbook.

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