an ex-editorial assistant's grievances
am thinking this is the best time to air my grievances about the local textbook industry. antonio go is hitting the media again.
i want to polish this and send this as a letter to the PDI editor. i know i should try to do more with it, but my priority is speed. the deped already promises to fix the textbook errors, and as the link above says, the partidong manggagawa is already urging for a probe... but i never had much faith in government machineries.
however, i wonder if this is still necessary information. need other people's input first. is this saying too much, should i be anonymous, should i not send the letter? please help...
***
Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is __. I am currently working as an Internet journalist for an offshore company.
I have been following the progress of Mr. Go's efforts to uncover the mistakes in public elementary and high school textbooks. Mr. Antonio Calipjo-Go has been fighting hard to be heard for some time, and now I feel I am able to convey my support for him; having faulty required reading circulate in our schools is a fundamental problem that must be addressed immediately. Especially when one considers the urgent need to put better, tougher graduates out into the fierce global market.
Perhaps I could help more by sharing my experiences. It has been a while since I was involved with the textbook editing industry, but it seems the problems that beset us then are still the problems that beset us now.
Right after graduating with a degree in Journalism from the University of the Philippines, I started working in one of the country's leading publishing houses as an editorial assistant. I was thrilled and proud to have gotten the job; I come from a family of teachers, and have always thought of teaching as a truly noble profession. I considered helping edit elementary and high school textbooks my way of reaching out to impressionable young minds.
But I wasn't fully prepared for the things I learned in my brief stay in that publishing house. This was what they were, in a nutshell: frequently, textbook authors are old, highly decorated teachers; often retired, so they would have time to focus on writing. The same authors would come up with new books year after year, or collaborate with other authors to create new series.
However, some of the first drafts of the manuscripts that were submitted to us were already full of mistakes, were slipshod and barely put together. As a fresh graduate I was shocked that teachers, the people I respected, admired and looked up to while I was growing up, could come up with so many fundamental mistakes in facts, figures and even basic grammar.
My superiors kept reminding me that "not all good teachers are good writers." I understood this and took this to heart. But I could not accept this as an excuse for the poor quality of the manuscripts that landed on our editorial desks. Sometimes there would be profanities, shockingly violent scenarios, and things that simply did not make sense, in the sample lessons.
I was taught to exercise maximum tolerance in editing. If I had any questions, or thought anything was inappropriate, I was to tag the problem pages, so that if my editor could not clear things up for me, the manuscript could be sent back to the author for lookover and revision. However, there were times when the manuscript was sent back to me by an author with my questions unanswered, or answered hurriedly, in a way that still left me confused.
Apparently some authors expected me to fix the unclear parts, which -- as I learned the hard way -- meant rewriting them, then sending them back for checking. This became a horrid enough task when I experienced having to rewrite almost an entire book because it had so many problem spots.
Though I was still luckier than my co-workers; some authors actually picked fights with the editors, or the other editorial assistants, over "facts" that were clearly inappropriate or downright wrong.
The editorial assistants in my publishing house have to check, double-check and triple-check all the facts that are in a manuscript; this usually means spending too much time doing research. And then, they have to come up against stubborn elderly teachers who would not acknowledge their mistakes. My colleagues and I always took checking and research seriously -- but even then, I could imagine how the task could get too draining for workers in other publishing houses. If other editorial assistants in other publishing houses could put less effort into checking facts, I could easily see how they would jump at the chance.
I also learned that on some occasions, the authors have other people ghost-write for them. This could mean some authors require their inexperienced students to ghost-write in exchange for better grades, or pay people to ghost-write for them, or just ask friends to ghost-write for them as a "favor." I have seen for myself how some manuscripts supposedly written by just one author clearly read like they were written by more than one person. There was no effort on the author's part to even make the chapters try to stick together; the formatting, the writing style, and even the type of paper used for the first draft came in all shapes and sizes.
Frankly, I would prefer that educators who produce horrendous manuscripts, or else claim authorship of books they did not write, be reported, then reprimanded. But I know this would not work, because 1) said educators would stop submitting manuscripts, which would mean less books to print, and the industry is always badly in need of new textbooks, and 2) who should they be reported TO?
The DepEd has shown clearly that it sides with these authors -- not with the people who have the gall to tell them they are wrong.
It was no less than appalling for me to hear the representatives of the Department of Education say that they "did not notice" the errors that Mr. Go pointed out. What kind of dignity do these people have as educators, when all they say in response to being corrected is "Ay mali pala, hindi namin napansin" and keep ignoring the errors, hoping they'll be forgotten?
I can only make assumptions as to why the Department of Education insists on covering up its shortcomings. Many of the teachers who write the textbooks we use today are highly respected; the countless years of having their name up in textbook covers have turned them into institutions. They earn much for themselves, for their publishers and for the DepEd, so why break this trend?
There are no new authors to make money out of. There are no young teachers who have the inclination or the time to write new manuscripts -- and even if there were, why would the Department of Education invest on new authors they do not hobnob with on fancy occasions, who do not have so many years of teaching experience and so many awards to brag about on the back cover?
I also fear that few younger teachers have the ability to write decent educational materials for elementary and high school students. Our younger generations of teachers, like the rest of us, were raised on lazy teaching methods that practically discourage inventiveness; it's all been said before, anyway, so just recycle. Why expend so much energy on making distinctive, and possibly even revolutionary educational materials, when one can just get an older colleague's template and build on it? The young teacher probably has no idea if a template he or she adopted was flawed to begin with.
Let's not turn a blind eye to the impact of low wages on one's work quality. The creative energies of teachers, young or old, are sapped by the mere effort of making ends meet with the slave wages they earn.
At the heart of the matter is, the authors of our textbooks need to take their output more seriously. They may be highly decorated and they may come with credentials that span so many pages... but that is no excuse for sloppy research, and even sloppier output.
Editors end up all but rewriting a single manuscript instead of simply reviewing it for consistency and accuracy of content. And while the editors may claim some responsibility for some errors escaping their attention, the fact that major errors existed in the first draft is in itself a grave reflection of the kind of education our textbook authors received, and are passing on to the next generation.
Why not allow young teachers to train overseas specifically to learn the craft of producing proper educational materials for elementary and high school students? They can then come back and offer to teach other educators the craft, and set about writing their own books. It appears we cannot expect young teachers to look to their predecessors here for help in breaking new ground.
This is not to say that ALL highly credentialed authors of elementary and high school textbooks are incapable of polishing their work; it is just that textbook production for our impressionable young has become more of a business and less of a responsibility.
What angers me the most is that the DepEd does not address the basic problems that make its mechanism faulty. We hear proposals like an additional year in school, when the educational materials are erroneous and the teachers themselves can't be expected to check the facts before reciting them outloud to children who absorb them without question. For the unlucky student, it will be one more year of the same problem books, and the same problem teachers. We trivialize over what language to use in teaching history, when we can't even lay down historical facts correctly.
That we are a third world country is not an excuse for remaining ignorant. Impoverished though we are as a people, we have a literacy rate of over 94%, one of the highest in the world... and we are wasting it by learning all the wrong things.
***
okay, now for not-so-angry stuff.
heads up, for the filipino pee-ple: great big job fair with terrible marketing pitch coming up.
and for those interested in optical camouflage technology: old article, but cooool :D
i want to polish this and send this as a letter to the PDI editor. i know i should try to do more with it, but my priority is speed. the deped already promises to fix the textbook errors, and as the link above says, the partidong manggagawa is already urging for a probe... but i never had much faith in government machineries.
however, i wonder if this is still necessary information. need other people's input first. is this saying too much, should i be anonymous, should i not send the letter? please help...
***
Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is __. I am currently working as an Internet journalist for an offshore company.
I have been following the progress of Mr. Go's efforts to uncover the mistakes in public elementary and high school textbooks. Mr. Antonio Calipjo-Go has been fighting hard to be heard for some time, and now I feel I am able to convey my support for him; having faulty required reading circulate in our schools is a fundamental problem that must be addressed immediately. Especially when one considers the urgent need to put better, tougher graduates out into the fierce global market.
Perhaps I could help more by sharing my experiences. It has been a while since I was involved with the textbook editing industry, but it seems the problems that beset us then are still the problems that beset us now.
Right after graduating with a degree in Journalism from the University of the Philippines, I started working in one of the country's leading publishing houses as an editorial assistant. I was thrilled and proud to have gotten the job; I come from a family of teachers, and have always thought of teaching as a truly noble profession. I considered helping edit elementary and high school textbooks my way of reaching out to impressionable young minds.
But I wasn't fully prepared for the things I learned in my brief stay in that publishing house. This was what they were, in a nutshell: frequently, textbook authors are old, highly decorated teachers; often retired, so they would have time to focus on writing. The same authors would come up with new books year after year, or collaborate with other authors to create new series.
However, some of the first drafts of the manuscripts that were submitted to us were already full of mistakes, were slipshod and barely put together. As a fresh graduate I was shocked that teachers, the people I respected, admired and looked up to while I was growing up, could come up with so many fundamental mistakes in facts, figures and even basic grammar.
My superiors kept reminding me that "not all good teachers are good writers." I understood this and took this to heart. But I could not accept this as an excuse for the poor quality of the manuscripts that landed on our editorial desks. Sometimes there would be profanities, shockingly violent scenarios, and things that simply did not make sense, in the sample lessons.
I was taught to exercise maximum tolerance in editing. If I had any questions, or thought anything was inappropriate, I was to tag the problem pages, so that if my editor could not clear things up for me, the manuscript could be sent back to the author for lookover and revision. However, there were times when the manuscript was sent back to me by an author with my questions unanswered, or answered hurriedly, in a way that still left me confused.
Apparently some authors expected me to fix the unclear parts, which -- as I learned the hard way -- meant rewriting them, then sending them back for checking. This became a horrid enough task when I experienced having to rewrite almost an entire book because it had so many problem spots.
Though I was still luckier than my co-workers; some authors actually picked fights with the editors, or the other editorial assistants, over "facts" that were clearly inappropriate or downright wrong.
The editorial assistants in my publishing house have to check, double-check and triple-check all the facts that are in a manuscript; this usually means spending too much time doing research. And then, they have to come up against stubborn elderly teachers who would not acknowledge their mistakes. My colleagues and I always took checking and research seriously -- but even then, I could imagine how the task could get too draining for workers in other publishing houses. If other editorial assistants in other publishing houses could put less effort into checking facts, I could easily see how they would jump at the chance.
I also learned that on some occasions, the authors have other people ghost-write for them. This could mean some authors require their inexperienced students to ghost-write in exchange for better grades, or pay people to ghost-write for them, or just ask friends to ghost-write for them as a "favor." I have seen for myself how some manuscripts supposedly written by just one author clearly read like they were written by more than one person. There was no effort on the author's part to even make the chapters try to stick together; the formatting, the writing style, and even the type of paper used for the first draft came in all shapes and sizes.
Frankly, I would prefer that educators who produce horrendous manuscripts, or else claim authorship of books they did not write, be reported, then reprimanded. But I know this would not work, because 1) said educators would stop submitting manuscripts, which would mean less books to print, and the industry is always badly in need of new textbooks, and 2) who should they be reported TO?
The DepEd has shown clearly that it sides with these authors -- not with the people who have the gall to tell them they are wrong.
It was no less than appalling for me to hear the representatives of the Department of Education say that they "did not notice" the errors that Mr. Go pointed out. What kind of dignity do these people have as educators, when all they say in response to being corrected is "Ay mali pala, hindi namin napansin" and keep ignoring the errors, hoping they'll be forgotten?
I can only make assumptions as to why the Department of Education insists on covering up its shortcomings. Many of the teachers who write the textbooks we use today are highly respected; the countless years of having their name up in textbook covers have turned them into institutions. They earn much for themselves, for their publishers and for the DepEd, so why break this trend?
There are no new authors to make money out of. There are no young teachers who have the inclination or the time to write new manuscripts -- and even if there were, why would the Department of Education invest on new authors they do not hobnob with on fancy occasions, who do not have so many years of teaching experience and so many awards to brag about on the back cover?
I also fear that few younger teachers have the ability to write decent educational materials for elementary and high school students. Our younger generations of teachers, like the rest of us, were raised on lazy teaching methods that practically discourage inventiveness; it's all been said before, anyway, so just recycle. Why expend so much energy on making distinctive, and possibly even revolutionary educational materials, when one can just get an older colleague's template and build on it? The young teacher probably has no idea if a template he or she adopted was flawed to begin with.
Let's not turn a blind eye to the impact of low wages on one's work quality. The creative energies of teachers, young or old, are sapped by the mere effort of making ends meet with the slave wages they earn.
At the heart of the matter is, the authors of our textbooks need to take their output more seriously. They may be highly decorated and they may come with credentials that span so many pages... but that is no excuse for sloppy research, and even sloppier output.
Editors end up all but rewriting a single manuscript instead of simply reviewing it for consistency and accuracy of content. And while the editors may claim some responsibility for some errors escaping their attention, the fact that major errors existed in the first draft is in itself a grave reflection of the kind of education our textbook authors received, and are passing on to the next generation.
Why not allow young teachers to train overseas specifically to learn the craft of producing proper educational materials for elementary and high school students? They can then come back and offer to teach other educators the craft, and set about writing their own books. It appears we cannot expect young teachers to look to their predecessors here for help in breaking new ground.
This is not to say that ALL highly credentialed authors of elementary and high school textbooks are incapable of polishing their work; it is just that textbook production for our impressionable young has become more of a business and less of a responsibility.
What angers me the most is that the DepEd does not address the basic problems that make its mechanism faulty. We hear proposals like an additional year in school, when the educational materials are erroneous and the teachers themselves can't be expected to check the facts before reciting them outloud to children who absorb them without question. For the unlucky student, it will be one more year of the same problem books, and the same problem teachers. We trivialize over what language to use in teaching history, when we can't even lay down historical facts correctly.
That we are a third world country is not an excuse for remaining ignorant. Impoverished though we are as a people, we have a literacy rate of over 94%, one of the highest in the world... and we are wasting it by learning all the wrong things.
***
okay, now for not-so-angry stuff.
heads up, for the filipino pee-ple: great big job fair with terrible marketing pitch coming up.
and for those interested in optical camouflage technology: old article, but cooool :D