The arbitrary nature of content

So I decided to get rid of my textbook for the online and hybrid modern US History class I’m teaching in Spring. My old edition, on which all my multiple-choice quiz questions were based, was from 2004, and just too much has happened since then. Plus I’d have to redo all the quizzes anyway with a new edition. Plus I’m sick of textbooks, even though my students say they want one. (I am putting that issue aside for the moment, though I could write a whole book on how it’s a bad idea to cater to what students think they need rather than what they really need.)

The snowballing began immediately. Without a textbook, two things were bad.

First, a lot of factual content was now missing from the class. I had liked the labor perspective of my textbook, so that was missing too.

Second, my lectures, which are both written out with images and recorded in audio, must now be gone over thoroughly (not only do I record sections of lecture, but I have been combining these into a downloadable mp3 zip file for each lecture – not very sustainable when one wants to make changes).

So I took a close look at my first lecture, on Reconstruction. And I started adding a bit here and there. And it was boring. I realized I was adding boring stuff, the kind of stuff you’d find in … a textbook. I found that crap for Reconstruction done very well in Wikipedia, so I linked it and moved on.

I got to a lecture on the late 19th century, a section on domestic technology making more work for women. And I got totally sidetracked as a looked for a bit more information. I found out that Project Gutenberg has a bunch of late 19th century Scientific Americans online. I got sucked into the Victorian scientfic mind, and it was so much fun I forgot I was supposed to be fleshing out lectures with textbook stuff.

Then it dawned on me. Don’t do that. The point is to share with students my interpretation and perspective. I can link to anything factual they don’t know. The thing is, every textbook is an interpretation anyway. Writers put in or leave out what they think is important. My textbook didn’t even have Cesar Chavez in it until the most recent edition.

So I’m focusing instead on a bit of cultural literacy, colored by my judgement of what I think they should know. And as I add a bit here and there (oh yeah, flappers, F. Scott Fitzgerald needs to be here…) I am struck by how arbitrary the content really is.

So edupunks, you know the conclusion here, so let’s all say it together: IT’S NOT ABOUT THE CONTENT.

Even the Student Learning Outcomes for the class aren’t about the content (I know ’cause I wrote them). They’re about thinking historically and developing arguments based on primary source evidence. Sure, the COR (Course of Record) is about content, because the University Wants It So. I can link out to that, sure. Or have them go find it. What is the point of an adventure if you not only give them a map but walk them through every step of the wilderness?

I’ll give them the map and the means to the content, but the rest they must simply do. So I’ll finish up deleting the “your textbook says” passages from the lectures and the audio, record something cool on 19th century indoor sanitation, and focus on students collecting their own resources and creating arguments, which is what the class is really about anyway.