What is Wrong With Our Textbooks and How They’re Responsible for Increased Drop Out Rates

If you take a look at a modern day textbook, you’ll find a disturbing trend: they pack a lot of useless information in a sentence that could be written ANY other way and it would make more sense.

Example: “…Isotopes are atoms of an element that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. Most elements have several isotopes. For example, the element carbon (C) has three naturally occurring isotopes. All carbon isotopes have six proteins. Isotopes are named, however, by their number of protons plus their number of neutrons. Thus, carbon-12 (12C) has six neutrons…”

Example 2: “…Archibald Garrold coined the term inborn error of metabolism to describe an inherited disease called alkaptonuria. Alkaptonuria is a rare disease in which a person excretes homogentistic acid in his or her urine. Homogentistic acid is formed from the breakdown of the amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine, which are found in most protein foods. When the enzyme that breaks down…”

These two excerpts are breaking so many laws of writing it hurts to read them.

EXCESS WORDS

Both exceprts suffer from unnecessary wordage.

“For example, the element carbon (C) has three naturally occurring isotopes. All carbon isotopes have six proteins. Isotopes are named, however, by their number of protons plus their number of neutrons. Thus, carbon-12 (12C) has six”

‘Thus’, ‘however’ and ‘for example’ are filler words. ‘Naturally occuring’ is redundant.

NO MAIN SUBJECT

The second example jumps around so much it leaves the reader confused and lost. The first sentence is talking about a scientist who coined a term, the second sentence is about the disease and the third sentence has jumped to homogentistic acid.

Is it just me, or does this writer have ADD? Explaining things a little more in depth and in simpler terms is not a bad thing!

Both examples, taken from a highschool text, are pretentious and useless. They are so dettached and badly written that it’s exapserating to read!

One student was so fed up with a worksheet that was written in the same style, that she wrote this to the teacher after answering the questions:

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The enzyme that happens to be inadequate and faulty and hardly flawless at all indeed appears to be an enzyme with the given name (that is quite hard to spell, might I add) of homogenitistic acid. In accordance to the prevention of the aforementioned condition, infants should take precaution when it comes to certain dietary needs and the reduction of phenylalanine within the contents of the bloodstream. A baby with PKU could very much possibly languish as the necessary enzyme that transforms it safely is not present.

Now if you’ve actually have been perusing what I’ve written, you’ve perceived an increase in moderately over-eloquent terms. With the perceiving of this steady trend, I hope you’ve noticed the glaring overuse of terms that should never leave the leafy pages of a thesaurus. I hope you’ll also glance upon the assignment page that you’ve graced us with and realize that the same pretentious trend is also all too apparent.

Basically, the aforementioned document is pompous, over-eloquent fluff.

And it makes so little sense, it is singlehandedly causing the recession.

Amiably yours, a student staying true to the format and nature in the prompt.

Could this be the reason for drop out rates? Is this why students are so frustrated in school?

-Rika

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