NPOV is not impossible for textbooks. Why should it
be? It's the
easiest thing in the world. I don't agree with
Alex's comments on
history being necessarily POV at all -- I think that
his comment
misunderstands the social evolution of consensus
embodied in an NPOV
policy.
OK, I guess NPOV is possible for *some* textbooks,
namely the ones that couldn't have a POV (like
programming languages) or ones with minimal
disagreement (such as physics or literature), but for
things like Israeli history (I'm not sure if Alex was
reffering to page history or actual history, I haven't
read his message yet), there is widespread
disagreement about basic underlying facts, not to
mention people's motives, both of which are essential
to creating a good textbook. To represent both of
these views in a single textbook could be confusing to
many kids below the college level (not all of them,
but a significant amount). At the elementary school
level, simplification to a DPOV is absolutely
necessary so that all of the kids in the class can
follow it.
Suppose it is true that at any point in time, a
history text will be
imperfect, biased in some way. Does that mean we
have good reason to
celebrate this flaw? And to enshrine it? I think
not. If someone
comes along to improve the text by making it
neutral, that's great,
and that's what NPOV is all about.
Consider, what is the alternative? Suppose someone
comes along and
finds a biased or inaccurate statement in a
textbook, a statement
which puts forward a particular point of view. Now,
someone clicks
on "edit this page" and changes the statement to
make it neutral,
i.e. to make it so that both sides of a dispute
could agree to it.
Are you suggesting that such behavior should be
frowned upon? Perhaps
subject to banning? Can you imagine the result?
"Jimbo, I think you
should ban Mr. Reasonable because he keeps coming in
and making our
biased text less biased. We don't disagree with
what he's writing,
it's actually NPOV, but we are opposed to
neutrality."
If we have a policy to write clear, non-wishy-washy,
age-appropriate textbooks, then in some cases NPOV
could be used. But in most cases in the K-12 level,
we'd have to minimise NPOV and use more of a DPOV. We
wouldn't ban people because they make the textbooks
unclear, we'd just tell them that we prefer textbooks
that can be easily understood at that age level and
ask them to change it to be more clear. If not, we can
change the textbook ourselves to make it clearer. We'd
never ban, or even consistantly revert, the work of
people using NPOV. I think that if people are using an
NPOV, they wouldn't have edit wars and would probably
respond to our request of DPOV.
NPOV is the answer. The point is, if there is
legitimate controversy,
then the text itself need take no particular stand,
but rather present
the conflict in a way that all parties can agree.
Creationists wouldn't want half of their textbook
filled up with the Christ-hating, secular humanist
arguments of Darwinists. Similarly, Darwinists
wouldn't like half of their textbook filled with the
pseudoscientific views of creationists. In the end,
NPOV could be a big waste of time. I think that,
possibly, the textbooks could have footnotes or (I
hope this is implimented) annotation, but these notes
would have only short arguments and not go into too
much depth.
Ack! This is a total misunderstanding of NPOV.
There is no
requirement that we make "every sentence NPOV", as
if we have to treat
the text as a series of statements rather than a
flow of discussion.
It's perfectly appropriate to set a context, and
then talk within that
context.
Sorry, I guess I understand you now.
I think this is all a very misguided conversation,
an attempt to solve
non-existent problems with NPOV.
--Jimbo
There are problems. Textbooks are fundimentally
different than encyclopedias. That's no argument *for*
DPOV, but NPOV is different in a textbook context.
Textbooks for young children need to be clear and
simple, something which NPOV has a deficiency in. NPOV
can also take up a lot of space with stuff many
teachers won't use, making the textbook either have
twice as many pages or half the content. What if we
used the context idea like you're talking about, but
instead of the paragraphs as the context, what if we
use most of the textbook. Then we'd write a disclaimer
that says that this is only one of the several
possible POVs on the topic. We could also write a
little about other POVs, but within actual textbooks,
we can't give them equal time. Individual textbooks
can choose a POV to focus on most of the time.
LDan
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