RE: Political Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Digital Textbook Selection Processes

Web Philosophy Community Group,

There is also an idea or concept that schoolboards can, beyond selecting textbooks, articulate their desires with regard to products and in ways ideally resonant with their campaign platforms, and in a public and transparent way including to all competitors seeking to sell them products. That topic pertains to the breadth of options, and to democratic political processes.

With that, there are a number of concerns or questions.  Some are:

Are textbooks being written sycophantically for political schoolboards or are textbooks being written accurately for expert schoolboards?  This question is towards concerns that some historians and social studies textbooks authors have expressed.  For each subject, independent experts can review textbooks and schoolboard textbook selections and can speak freely and in news ways utilizing the Web.

In the United States, we can observe that many historians and history students who teach at universities have opinions about high school history textbooks.  Many History 101 courses at universities address differences between high school textbook content and university curriculum.  Should universities offer, for public school schoolboard textbook selection processes, high school history curriculum and textbooks which segue into university history curriculum?  History teachers at universities have commented about student participation in classroom discussion in addition to various content details and particulars.

Should schoolboards be more transparent?

Are a broader number of textbook options more respectful to the electorate and processes of democracy?  Beyond an ideal breadth of textbooks in the space of content possibilities, what are the economics of the situation?

With the marketplace and the enhanced inclusivity of textbook authoring, and insofar as revenue incentivizes labor, including with regard to new and evolving techniques pertaining to the design and development of multimedia books, are laws required to establish minimum retail prices for digital textbooks to ensure sustainable competition and industrial economics, contrary to some opinions including in Sacramento?
 
Those with opinions on such topics, and more topics, have, beyond philosophical contemplation, additional options including enhancing the public awareness of the importance of schoolboard elections, the use of free speech, assembly, and use of political rhetoric; schoolboards are important and it should be this way or that way and you should know this or that to vote in a more well-informed way for schoolboard candidates with platforms like this or that.



Kind regards,

Adam Sobieski