Yahoo! News Story - Biology Textbooks Draw Complaints

Biology Textbooks Draw Complaints

By ANJETTA McQUEEN, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - If today's students want to understand howscientists mapped the human genetic code, they won't get much helpfrom their high school textbooks, a group of scientists andeducators said Tuesday.

``Textbooks treat the topic piecemeal, leaving out the simplestory or obscuring it with needless details,'' said George Nelsonof the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Thegroup leveled its harshest critique yet of U.S. math and sciencelessons, giving an unsatisfactory rating to all 10 of the majorhigh school biology textbooks it reviewed.

They said the books - hundreds of pages long and filled withquizzes and splashy color drawings of cells - miss the big picture.They don't flesh out the four basic ideas driving today's research:how cells work, how matter and energy flow from one source toanother, how plants and animals evolve and the molecular basis ofheredity.

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Besides glossing over vital concepts to drill students onvocabulary words, the books do not encourage students to examinetheir ideas or relate lessons to hands-on experiments and everydaylife, researchers said in the report released Tuesday.

For instance, they said, students kept busy naming the parts ofcells might miss learning how cells work - and understanding howscientists could use that knowledge to search the DNA in humancells for defective genes that cause diseases.

``In a democracy, people should have a voice in making thesedecisions, and that should come from an informed opinion ratherthan just an emotional one,'' said Nelson, a former astronaut whonow leads the group's campaign to improve science and matheducation.

Reacting to the report, book publishers said state standardsdrive the content of biology lessons.

``The content of instructional materials is not determined bythose who publish these materials but rather by those who usethem,'' said Stephen Driesler, executive director of the schooldivision of the Association of American Publishers Inc.

Andrea Bowden, who oversees math and science education forBaltimore City Public Schools, said despite years ofstandards-driven education reform, classroom teachers remainconfused and dismayed by the quality of lessons on the market.

``We seem to know what we want but we can't seem to get itbetween the pages of these textbooks,'' said Bowden, who added thatthe 112,000-student district has spent more than $17 million onmath and science texts since 1998.

The books the group studied represented the most widely used ofabout two dozen biology texts published mainly for millions ofstudent in grades 9 through 12. No books were considered excellentor satisfactory.

The college and K-12 teachers and biologists who reviewed thebooks had no relationship with the publishers. The CarnegieFoundation financed the project.

Although publishers depend on local school boards to buy theirmaterials, they have not shied away from politically sensitivetopics such as evolution, which is dismissed by creationists, whofavor a Bible-based view of the Earth's formation.

``Kids are not going to learn much biology but it's not becausebooks are watered down for political reasons,'' Nelson said.

Though some books scored well in specific categories, none wasgood at building on what pupils already know or correctingmisconceptions, Nelson said.

Due to misinformation from peers, families or even a poorteacher, a child might think giraffes developed longer necks fromreaching for branches. Good biology lessons, Nelson said, wouldhelp that student deduce that animals are randomly born withtraits, such as longer necks to reach for high branches, that makethem more likely to survive and have offspring.

Textbooks are only part of the formula, said officials atImmunex Corp. (NasdaqNM:IMNX - news), a Seattle-based biotechnology company that educatesnearly 4,000 schoolchildren and trains about 100 teachers each yearthrough classroom visits, workshops and field trips to its labs.

``It's not just a set of unlinked facts,'' said Janis Wignall,who directs the company's education programs. ``Kids need to bescientists if they are going to understand what science is.''

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On the Net: The textbook review: http://project2061.aaas.org

Immunex: http://www.immunex.com

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