ABSTRACT
Some courses have textbooks that function much like encyclopedias. That is, commonly accepted knowledge in the discipline is arranged around a traditional rhetorical structure. It is assumed that all of the core knowledge, issues, and values associated with the course are available to students in the textbook. Textbook authors work from previous models. They are often held hostage to a publishing regime that is conservative in its approach to the market. In my discipline, textbooks say the same thing today that they said when I was an undergraduate. They may have added more bells and whistles over the years, but they are oblivious to the fact that the professional conversation has moved elsewhere. So when you choose to let a textbook limit the knowledge base of the course, you have selected a conventional solution. There are good reasons for doing so, and there are good reasons for selecting an alternative approach. The reasons in favor of the textbook are that it works. It does provide a way for students to acquire a coherent knowledge base, which they can then work with to strengthen their reasoning skills, in a subject area where they have no previous exposure. It also reinforces the scope of cultural literacy: they will acquire the same knowledge in this course that students in other universities are acquiring. In choosing this way of limiting the knowledge base, the size, heft, and cost of the textbook dominate the design of the course, often crowding out other activities and other sources of knowledge. To justify the weight and expense of the text, covering it becomes the task of instructor and student alike.
