Reviewing a high-school book in earth science

Modern Earth Science
1998. 714 pages. ISBN of the student's edition: 0-03-050609-3.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.,
1120 South Capital of Texas Highway, Austin, Texas 78746.
(This company is a division of Harcourt Brace & Company,
which is a part of Harcourt General Inc.)

A Superficial Revision of an Old, Weak Book

Anne C. Westwater

Much of the good news has to do with the illustrations, activities, and other items that augment the book's main text:

• The photographs are wonderful. High-quality illustrations like these will catch the attention of students and excite a desire to know more about Earth, the solar system and the universe.

• At the back of the book, ten "Long-Range Investigation" projects provide opportunities for some field work and for observing -- over periods of weeks or months -- changes in such things as the tidal range, the Sun's azimuth at sunrise and sunset, the concentration of particulates in the air, and the clarity of the water in a lake or stream. The devices needed for these activities are fairly simple, and students construct some of the devices for themselves. Each project requires the students to record data and to use the data in drawing conclusions. The students can make classroom presentations about their findings and can even turn their completed projects into science-fair exhibits.

• Eight "Maps in Action" articles provide interesting information and ways to use that information. Three of these articles, with their associated activities, are especially appealing. "Where the Hippos Roam" requires students to convert a table of data into a map showing where fossils have been found. "A Case of the Tennessee Shakes" gives the students an opportunity to interpret maps while learning about seismic activity. "What Comes Down Must Go . . . Where?" directs the students to map their school campus, predict patterns of runoff, and then test their predictions by making observations during a rainstorm.

• The eight "Career Focus" articles seem unusually good. Each tells about several occupations that have something in common. In "Career Focus: Oceans," for example, the occupations are oceanography, underwater photography, and marine surveying. In "Career Focus: Natural Resources" we read about soil-conservation specialists, hydrologists and water-treatment technicians. The writers have made sure to include occupations that don't demand advanced degrees, and each "Career Focus" article tells students how to get more information by consulting the Web site of a reputable organization -- e.g., the American Geological Institute, the American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

• Fifteen spreads headlined "Science and Technology" offer information about recent discoveries or technological advances. The topics include the Hubble Space Telescope, an experimental desalination system, the Galileo spacecraft's journey to Jupiter, the use of satellites to extend our knowledge of Earth, the use of CAT scanning to study fossils, and the use of radar interferometry to monitor the retreat of glaciers in Antarctica.

As a teacher, I am always interested in learning whether a "new" version of a textbook is truly new, or whether it's an old book with a different cover, some add-ons, and a higher price. I therefore have compared this 1998 version of Modern Earth Science with the 1989 version, as described by Arthur J. Boucot and Richard A. Smith in The Textbook Letter for May-June 1990. Guess what! -- most of the factual and conceptual errors that Boucot and Smith saw in the 1989 version are still in place, nine years later. They include wrong descriptions of the geologic nature of plains, the formation of coal, and the formation of placer deposits; an erroneous attempt to classify landforms; and even a startlingly wrong notion (which Boucot described as "laughable") about the location of Pangaea. In a number of places, Holt has reprinted erroneous material word-for-word.

Smith's evaluation of the 1989 Modern Earth Science included some remarks about the book's Unit 5, which deals largely with paleontology:

Compared with what it should be, it is pitifully thin. It is also incoherent. Paleontologists integrate their information around the theme of organic evolution, the principle that explains the succession seen in the fossil record. Holt's writers do not do this -- indeed, they have no integrating theme at all -- and they treat organic evolution as if it were only a sidelight or afterthought.

All of that is still true. In the 1998 book, Unit 5 is still inadequate and still lacks an integrating theme, and its depiction of organic evolution is incoherent and wrong. On page 347 students read that natural selection is often called "the survival of the fittest." Then the students are subjected to a passage which perpetuates two erroneous notions -- that natural selection requires "environmental changes," and that individual organisms can alter themselves to suit "environmental changes" and thus become more "fit." Nothing in the 1998 book helps students to distinguish between the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution, and nothing in this book can help students to learn how natural selection really works.

Some of the factual errors that Boucot and Smith saw in the 1989 book have disappeared -- either because the passages in which they occurred have been discarded entirely, or because Holt was able to correct them by changing only a line or two or type. This is little comfort. It is clear that Holt's revising of Modern Earth Science has been sporadic and superficial, with most of the effort directed toward the creation of eye-catching novelties. Holt has not made any systematic attempt to repair the many mistakes in the book's main text.

Nor has Holt made any serious attempt to update the book as a whole. Yes, there is a feature article about the Galileo spacecraft's journey to Jupiter, as I noted earlier -- but the book never even mentions the spectacle that we witnessed in 1994, when Jupiter was struck by the remnants of Periodic Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. There is a boxed sidebar about the earthquake that wreaked destruction on Kobe, Japan, in 1995, but there is nothing about the Northridge, California, earthquake of 1994. There is nothing about recent investigations of Chicxulub Crater, the buried impact crater which provides impressive evidence that a big comet or asteroid collided with Earth some 65 million years ago. A picture-caption on page 608 declares categorically that "In 1996, scientists discovered fossil evidence of primitive microorganisms" in a meteorite that supposedly originated on Mars -- but that claim is outdated and misleading. In more recent studies of the meteorite, other scientists have judged the "fossil evidence" to be enigmatic and inconclusive.

Here's a little more bad news. Modern Earth Science has 30 "Small-Scale Investigation" activities (one in each chapter), but too many of them seem inappropriate because of the materials and preparation time that they require. However, they may be useful as demonstrations, to be performed by a selected student or by the teacher.

Like many other schoolbooks, the 1998 Modern Earth Science gives the impression that it has been assembled from bits and pieces, by people who didn't know as much as they should have known about the subject matter. There is no way to infer who those people were. The book's title page shows the names of four alleged authors but doesn't identify them. Later we encounter an introduction (on pages xvi and xvii) that is signed by one of those four, Robert J. Sager, and we read that Sager teaches at Pierce College, in Lakewood, Washington. The three other "authors" remain mystery-men whose whereabouts are unknown. On the other hand, Holt has furnished (on page iii) an impressive list of alleged "reviewers," each identified by affiliation and location. The contrast between this display and Holt's withholding of information about the book's so-called authors is striking.

Anne C. Westwater retired in 1997 from a twenty-year career as a science teacher, including some fifteen years as a teacher of biology, earth science and environmental science at Napa High School (in Napa, California). She now lives at The Sea Ranch (in Sonoma County, California) and works as a consultant in the application of brain research to educational practice.

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