Re: Book REview

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

This is no longer about Mike Feldman's book.
It is about textbooks in general.

Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> Last Friday I received several textbooks for review.
> The book is apparently being sold in an international market (I'm posting
> from Australia), but it appears to have been _written_ for the US market.

Dave Jones <davedave@io.com> writes:

>Personally, I think that it is wise to make a textbook culturally specific.

Perhaps so, but
(a) there is a big difference between INTENTIONALLY localising a book
    and UNINTENTIONALLY localising it.
(b) if a textbook is deliberately made culturally specific, then
    why sell it to other cultures?>

>The use of culturally specific examples helps to hold student attention
>and makes for a superior textbook.

This may be so.  Can you point me to any studies which provide
_evidence_ for this claim?  Certainly in the specific case at issue
*none* of the cultural specificity is of the kind that would grab
the attention of a US student.  They are things that a US student,
just like a US author, simply takes for granted.  I find it difficult
to imagine a US student being excited by "GPA" or "Sophomore" or the
assumption that there are only 26 letters.  Or, to take another example,
look at the history of computing on p5.  It's not really surprising that
there is no mention of the CSIR Mk 1, which was the first electronic
stored program computer in Australia, and was among the first five
_anywhere_ in the world, running its first program during 1949.  But
it was rather a shock to find no mention of Zuse or Turing.
Does this focus on US contributions to computing "hold student
attention"?  Like fun it does, they don't _KNOW_ the bias is there.
Does it "make for a superior textbook"?  I really don't see how leaving
Algol out of Ada's history makes the textbook any better.
If you are concerned with women in history, how does including Christine
Anderson but excluding the first programmer, the Countess of Lovelace,
"hold student attention" or "make for a superior textbook"?
(This is _not_ an argument for omitting Christine Anderson; but I think
Grace Hopper has more claim to be included in a table of Milestones.)


>Perhaps, Mr. O'Keefe should contact Addison-Wesley about 
>creating an Australian edition.  For that matter, I would think that the 
>Australians are perfectly capable of writing their own textbook.

>Mr. O'Keefe also needs to realize the economics of the situation.
>Australia has a tiny population (about 18 million) and a trivial GDP
>(about US$340 billion).

Mr Jones needs to read what he just wrote.  If Australia has a tiny
population (and it's about 6 times the population of my own country)
and a trivial GDP, then why would Addison-Wesley be interested in
creating an Australian edition?

In any case, Dr O'Keefe is not an Australian, so would not be able to
produce an Australian edition, and as about half of the students he
is worried about aren't Australians either, he wouldn't _want_ an
Australian edition.  About half of our first year students are not
native speakers of English.

>It would be very very unwise for Addison-Wesley to risk a position in the US 
>market in order to increase their position in the Australian market.  I
>would not expect there to be any changes in the book until people in
>larger countries start complaining.

Perhaps Mr Jones should think a little bit more about the politico-economic
situation himself.  Of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia
is the *most* Americanised.  Australia and New Zealand (which is where I
come from) _do_ have a tradition of free speech and dissent; many of the
more populous cultures of the region have a tradition of teacher authority
and student submission; if the Big Teacher dishes something out, the
student dutifully memorises it, whether it makes sense or not.  Don't
think of

And in the case of the Feldman/Koffman book, internationalising it would
pose absolutely no risk to its position in the US market.  *None* of the
issues I have identified is central to its educational aims or methods.
For example, the continuing project which is one of many excellent features
of the book, the "spider graphics" stuff, is about as culture-neutral as
one could reasonably hope for.

-- 
Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ???
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.