Jimbo wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
The reason why our encyclopedias have to be NPOV is because our audience is a general one. The reason why our textbooks have to be DPOV is because our audience is very focused (the biology student, for example) and we need to bring that student through the material in a logical and efficient way.
Hmmm, don't be so quick to dismiss NPOV in this context. Consider:
- Within various disciplines there
are legitimate and ongoing disputes of which students should be made aware.
Yes, exactly. But our current NPOV policy states that we should include all major viewpoints in a neutral manor (notice the lack of focus). This makes perfect sense in an general focus encyclopedia but doesn't make much sense in a textbook. I was planning all along to take the NPOV text and make some minor qualifications in reference to the scope under which the new policy (DPOV) would operate.
- If "outside" views are likely to
be encountered by students, then students should be made aware of them, including the weakness in their arguments.
It depends on the focus of the particular course you are writing for. An intro class in biology shouldn't spend too much time defending the underlying premise that modern biology is founded on (namely, evolution). There is a great deal of material to get through and therefore the arguments of creationism needn't be given much space or much credibility in such a textbook. However, if we can figure out how to organize chapters into modules then we can potentially create a very wide-foccused (and huge) textbook reference edition on all aspects of biology (including many counter-arguments to evolution and alternate interpretations of other aspects). That way instructors would be able to assemble textbooks from these modules into a variety of different configurations with each having a different emphasis (there would have to be a core set of modules that would form the foundation and framework of the textbook though).
Same thing is true for a section of a medical textbook on abortion ; we leave out most of the history and the different political views on the subject and just talk about the procedure itself and maybe have a single paragraph at the end sating something about access to the procedure and that risks doctors face when they choose to specialize in this area.
Right, but that's not POV-editing, that's just restricting topical focus. Here's how to tell -- an article which describes the procedure neutrally (and in medical detail, say) could be agreed upon by all reasonable people, regardless of their political or ethical views on the matter.
Our current NPOV policy does not restrict topical focus; that was my point. It reads in part "A general purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance other than the stance of the neutral point of view." Simply replacing "encyclopedia" with "textbook" will not do for a textbook editing policy. If NPOV (as written) were applied to the evolution chapter of the above biology textbook example then we would have to present creationism viewpoints on an equal footing with the viewpoints of biologists. This is not acceptable when trying to explain evolution in a biology textbook because no serious biologist gives any credence to anti-evolution ideas. But NPOV can and should be applied to the major viewpoints that exist from within the biological sciences. There could still be optional modules that deal with the viewpoints of society as a whole - the larger debate (so that the same textbook could be used in a class that deals with those types of issues). The core modules need to be very specific in focus, though. Otherwise students won't know what to think (yes, part of education is indoctrination into the POV of a discipline).
So yes, we can write about the current understanding of what evolution is and how it is theorized to operate but we cannot mix that with creationism viewpoints in the same module. So a modified NPOV ("DPOV") would need to operate in a compartmentalized fashion; within a core module it operates from within the context of whatever discipline the textbook is being written for; but in an optional module it can operate with a wider focus (although most optional modules are going to be more detailed treatments of certain topics raised in a core module). In short, the goals of what each module needs to do need to be focused. That requires restricting NPOV to that context.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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