Sometimes the federal government does something so laughably moronic, that one has to stop and ask the question “Are they really that dumb or is something else going on?”
Here is the setup. Recently a number of universities around the country decided to take a look at using some modern technology in the classroom in an effort to save money. These universities took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. As you know, many people now use e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook as a replacement for traditional printed books. There are many reasons for this including cost, environmental impact, and convenience. Further, anyone who has gone to college understands the high cost of textbooks and would likely support any way to reduce this large expense.
Here is the pathetic punchline. For conducting this experiment with the Kindle, Obama’s Department of Justice threatened legal action against the universities. The ridiculous contention of the Obama administration is that the Kindle and e-readers violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. Why? Because the blind can’t easily use them.
Now the first thing that would pop into the minds of anybody with a third grade education and that does not work for the government is this simple question. If e-readers discriminate against the blind, do not traditional textbooks discriminate equally? The obvious answer is yes.
This line of reasoning is so absurd that it is hard to believe that even federal employees could be this myopic and moronic. So it begs the question: What might be the real motivation here? What else could be at stake that the government would prefer to be considered neo-luddites rather than reveal their true motivation?
Warner Todd Huston, writing at Gateway Pundit suggests that the real motivation may be money. That universities and professors make gobs of money off forcing students to by expensively priced textbooks authored by their professors.
While this is true, I don’t think that this really speaks to the motivation of the federal government. After-all, it was the universities who wanted to try this and the federal government that put a stop to it.
I posit another and perhaps more nefarious reason. I think that the federal government is adamantly opposed to the use of e-readers as an alternative to textbooks for fear of loss of control. This loss of control is not so much at the university level but at much younger levels. The universities just happened to be the first ones to try.
Publishing a textbook is a very expensive proposition. So text-book publishers need to be sure that they will sell. This fact limits choices to school boards across the country. Control over curriculum is driven by the limited choices in textbooks. Individual school boards that are unhappy with the choices can do very little about it because they do not constitute enough of a market to be worthwhile to publishers to provide alternatives. So school boards are forced to pick their poison.
A great deal of control over curriculum nationwide is exerted through textbook control. Education is critical to progressives. Remember, those who control education, control the culture.
This explains why progressive educators nationwide were up in arms recently about State government mandated changes to textbooks in Texas. The market for textbooks in Texas is so large, that publishers would have to meet the demands. Once these textbooks were published for Texas, publishers would naturally try to sell them to school districts elsewhere as well and political progressives domination of textbooks would be in jeopardy. This is why the Texas curriculum story was a national story.
So now imagine the impact that e-readers could have on the primary and secondary textbook industry. A large part of the cost of textbooks and a key factor in limiting the variety of textbooks available is the actual printing costs. If printing costs were substantially reduced or even eliminated, textbook publishers would be much more free to create custom textbooks more acceptable to school boards across the country and in particular those red states in flyover country.
If the cost of publishing textbooks was substantially reduced by using e-readers, publishers could and likely would make alternative textbooks, with a more culturally and socially conservative bent, available to school districts nationwide. With absolutely no need to reprint in order to strike or change anything offensive, it would be easy.
I posit that the democratization of the textbook industry, and consequently ideas and beliefs, might be the real fear of the administration. I suppose that the administration would prefer people believe that they are backward and bureaucratic rather than reveal their true intent in banning e-readers.
They might not be neo-luddites after all, they might be Stalinists.
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Actually, ebooks are more frieldly to people with disabilities than textbooks, since ebook readers can include text to voice capabilities.
I have no idea why the federal government would care about this at all…I suspect it has more to do with gross incompetence than anything else. But I think everyone needs to tone down the meme that professors make lots of money assigning textbooks. First, in all of my years iuniversity, graduate school and as a professor, I have only know ONE professor who assigned one book of his own in one class, and he apologized for it on the first day. Most profs avoid assigning their own texts for fear of being accused of impropriety. Second, if we are talking about broad survey textbooks, like introductory history surveys (you know, Western Civilization, part I and the like), a very few texts have become standards and are available from the major publishers. So, only a few profs stand to profit in any case. If we are talking about academic monographs, a prof would likely only assign his book for an upper level class, which would have a small enrolment. Plus, there is almost NO money in academic monographs. My first book contract with an academic publisher guaranteed me ZERO money per copy on the first 500 copies, and then literally a few pennies per book on any copy beyond that.
Seriosuly, in the vast majority of cases, at least in the humanities, I seriously doubt profs are profited off textbok sales.
Stalinists? Really.
Ruined a great article with a stupid, inflammatory last sentence.
Occam’s Razor implies a simpler set of considerations:
1) The two national organizations for the Blind are very vociferous and politically connected.
2) These organizations aren’t concerned about e-books per se (since the portable ePub format can be translated to speech pretty easily).
3) However, the mass-market ebook *readers* were not designed with UIs that are friendly to the unsighted. You’d ideally need hard buttons with Braille (or similar) in the surface. Audio confirmation of commands would also be nice. Software buttons (e.g. iPad) with visual feedback aren’t helpful.
4) The blind groups in conjunction with the Feds want to pressure the ebook reader vendors to redesign their hardware for universal access - and they’re using access to the Federally-subsidized higher ed and K-12 markets as leverage.
In the end, it’s an attempt to “slightly” distort the free market for ebook readers to give manufacturers a reason to incorporate universal design in the products.
Doug,
That is a simple explanation but it seems inadequate to explain the disproportionate actions of the Feds. They could have accomplished the same thing many ways. Instead they threatened legal action against the universities to stop a voluntary program that involved a few dozen students?
Perhaps your simple explanation is the right one, but this draconian action against a small and voluntary trial using an absurd excuse is red flag that something else might be up.
See Section 504 of the ADA - which specifies the requirements products have to satisfy to be provide equal access to students with disabilities. I’ve been involved in online educational apps and content for over 15 years. Sometimes all it takes is a stickler for the rules that’s engaged and outraged (and has a bug up his a$$ placed there by an outside advocacy group) and you get these kinds of confrontational responses.
I really think in this case the “squeeze” is being placed on the creators of a new class of device (the ebook reader) to force the consumer market to bow to the regulatory needs of the public education sector.
There are certainly other cases where the government’s goal is to exert an influence on content, but I really don’t think that’s the case here.
Since the Kindle includes Text-2-Voice capabilities (if the publisher allows the feature) it is more accessible to the blind than a regular text book. As you suggest their real reason is otherwise.
The problem isn’t a lack of the ability to “read” the book. It’s a problem navigating the UI to select a book or turn to a specific page in a book. I don’t know if the newest Kindle has improved that sufficiently so that a visually-impaired person can turn it on and select a book and page to start reading without help from a sighted person.
I agree wholeheartedly that the government is being heavy-handed and all too ready to treat those without disabilities as Vonnegut’s character “Harrison Bergeron” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron). I’m just not ready in *this* case to indict them for trying to restrict content.
The Harrison Bergerization of society worries me far more. We’ve spent the last decade on “No Child Left Behind” (also known as No Child Moves Forward). Why worry about controlling content when you can degrade the ability of the next generation to think critically? When “equitable mediocrity” is enshrined in your schools and colleges and “potentially inequitable excellence” is grounds for a lawsuit, you don’t need to woory about your control slipping due to access to “subversive” books like the Bible!
P.S.: If you haven’t read C.S. Lewis’ short story “Screwtape Makes a Toast”, I highly recommend it. It’s apropos to this discussion.
Sorry, that was “Screwtape *Proposes* a Toast”, which is usually published as a postscript within The Screwtape Letters.
Vox borealis,
I’m not contesting your experience, but perhaps it is a feature of your discipline. I would say that when I was an undergrad and grad, at least half the academic terms, one of my courses would have a professor-authored book.
But in my case, I didn’t mind. I was in a specialized field (architecture and historic preservation) and my professors wrote their books because there wasn’t a good text book for the course or the university asked them to teach a new course because they had written an authoritative text on a subject. Also, these books were typically cheaper than other text books.
But I heard fairly regular horror stories from friends who were forced to buy the professor’s sub-standard text, so maybe it is a cash cow sometimes.
I don’t get it. Since blind people can’t use e-readers, then should books be banned as well?
Pat, I believe you hit the nail on the head!
It’s all about control, baby.
I suspect it’s an offshoot of the concerns of downloading music.
I do not use e-books so it makes no difference to me one way or the other.
David,
One of the goals is to force the market to create e-readers that have enough tactile/auditory feedback to be operated by the blind. The e-books themselves can be read to the blind, so it’s just a matter of making navigation accessible.
The blind have traditionally been the most vociferous group of disabled folks asserting their rights under ADA - so I’m never surprised when the bureaucrats resort to lawsuits as the first (rather than last) remedy.
There *could* also be control issues (as per Pat’s original thesis). This isn’t a necessary prerequisite for the current behavior we’re discussing.
Bring on the EREADERS. I have been able to obtain most of the Classics of Western Literature as PDF files for free!! The argument that the “progressives” see the threat of the availability of this literature to anyone who can download a PDF file and bring it to class to refute their propaganda(my reader permits me to mark passages and save them as notes) of their “modernist” teachers rings true with me.
I’ve taught a blind student at a university.
(1) I’d put my money on the initiative coming from manufacturers of current devices that assist the blind. Due to the small market, the devices are *extremely* expensive, and (in the case of the blind student I had) covered by the state. You can imagine the profit margin. Now comes the Kindle, the Nook, and the rest, and suddenly these manufacturers are staring insolvency in the face.
(2) In my experience as a student & professor of mathematics, professors sometimes assign their own books, and I’ve used at least one (& if I had gone into floating-point mathematics at my school, I’d have used at least two more). Professors who don’t assign their own book usually have complaints about the book the department committee mandates (Calculus, Trig, Linear Algebra, whatever), or else don’t assign a book at all but provide notes. Books are usually used for the exercise selection.
I’m told that, in mathematics, there is no money in textbooks unless you succeed with a text that achieves the economies of scale that lower-level or “service” courses require: statistics, calculus & below. Maybe linear algebra & diff eqs too.
Oh, and as for the main point, I don’t think the administration is Stalinist. They’re just stupid.
As for the news media… had something like this come from the Bush administration, imagine the headlines. But now we have a “competent”, “scientific”, “ethical” administration. The media’s dictionaries are definitely different than mine.
TJ - good on ya, mate! There’s nothing that prevents students from bringing eReaders into the classroom. This is a tool any “subversive” wishing to do battle with the LibProfs should have in their arsenal. However, the threat in question was against the universities using them on their own initiative.
Jack - the story Pat linked to shows that the guy Thomas Perez (the DoJ’s enforcer for this area) shows he’s an interfering SOB who believes in an activist government righting wrongs that no one is complaining about. I think your suggestion that the incumbent assistive devices manufacturers are also behind this is brilliant. I forgot that they would have economic reasons for suppressing high-volume/low-cost consumer solutions.
In short, whenever government is overreaching, there are three hidden sources:
1) Overreaching bureaucrats
2) Politically-connected strident advocacy groups
3) Rent-seeking private companies whose existence depends on the market distortions generated by government
We seem to have at least 1 and 3 operating here (and possibly 2 as well).
The excerpt from Matthew’s article below, with comments inside bracket [()]is probably the most important part of this article. What d the other readers think?
A great deal of control over curriculum nationwide is exerted through textbook control. Education is critical to progressives. Remember, those who control education, control the culture. (Now , think of Obama’s childhood development, i.e. Indonesian grade school;, contact with Frank Mitchell Davis during high school years;, professors at Occidental College and Columbia University;, Alinsky acolytes in Chicago; social/political training in Hyde Park, Chicago South Side; Chicago political cauldron. Put it all together, what else can you expect but what we have experienced since January 20, 2009?)
Posted by Jack Perry on Monday, Aug 9, 2010 1:16 PM (EST):
“Oh, and as for the main point, I don’t think the administration is Stalinist. They’re just stupid”.
In the article, the government agents were described as “dumb”. If only it were the case. Jack Perry has got it right, and uses the word of which dumb is an avoidance: “stupid”.
The universities are also totalitarian in many ways. I resorted to setting up a blog for my college ethics students because they couldn’t find balanced essays, news and commentaries in the college library to use in preparation of their papers. Today the books purchased by most colleges and universities are vetted. They have to pass the PC test. So, it sounds to me that this is a tug of war between two totalitarian regimes.
I just blogged about this. I don’t see a conspiracy, just the usual incompetent bureaucracies unable to see past a one-size-fits-all solution. You on the Right and we on the Left can make common cause on the issue of local control.
http://principledprofit.com/good-business-blog/government-thugs-or-right-wing-crazies/2010/08/10/
The charge is a lie. Kurzweil reading software can take any text and read it to you directly. My wife is profoundly dyslexic and had a copy of this software on her computer to help her study. So if you buy the eBook, you then import it into Kurzweil. Currently you buy the physical text book and scan it in page by page.
Which sounds worse?
The reason why this is a problem is that books are available in brail for people who can’t see. If books are no longer published and only available on kindle there is no alternative for the blind thus limiting their ability to take classes. I don’t know how many of you remember the days before the American with Disabilities Act. I cared for people who did not want anyone to know they had diabetes for fear of losing their jobs. It was a realistic fear and a life endangering decision in which people felt they had no option. Epileptics, diabetics, those with cancer, physical disabilities, HIV, etc where all discriminated against prior to this law. Today it is common place to go to the grocery store and see employees with both physical and mental disabilities. Ney sayers predicted that people wouldn’t be able to do these jobs prior to the passage of this legislation. Today no one thinks twice about seeing people with difference. As Christians and Catholics Jesus calls us to take care of those less fortunate. He doesn’t ask us to sit in judgment of others. For this reason, we should be applauding that someone is looking out for the interest of the blind and disable. Each of us should have to be blind or in a wheelchair or pushing someone in a wheelchair in building that did not have to comply with the American with Disabilities Act. Image being 90 years old and being unable to go to the bathroom because it won’t accommodate a wheelchair and the individual cannot walk or be carried that far! It is incredibly hard and humiliating for people in these situations. It is at times limiting to the services people can obtained. Why do we think it is okay to make fun or complain because someone has provided these services? This is not the way of Jesus. If other people had been providing the services the government wouldn’t need to do it. Perhaps we tend to blame the poor, sick and disable for being in the situation they are in because it is easier than thinking that it could be us instead. The reality is that 2/3 of the bankruptcies in this country are related to healthcare crises. These are people who went to work, had insurance, homes, savings etc until one catastrophic event occurred. Jesus doesn’t ask us to sit in judgment of others, to assume that people don’t deserve our compassion or caring because of the way they have lived their lives. He asks us to care for the poor and less fortunate period. If you cut out all the references that Jesus makes to the poor in the bible, you will find that there is very little left to it. How many homeless people do we each know? How many poor people? How many children who received their only meals at school? How many of us falsely assume these people are lazy or bums? How many of us truly understand that many of the working poor are working multiple jobs? How many times a week do we volunteer at a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, or a food closet doing the calling of Jesus rather than sitting in our comfortable homes? May we all pray that we do the work of Jesus, increase our understanding of those less fortunate and make this a better place for all.
Wow, how appropriate that you state you give a “spin” on the intersect of religion and politics. I read the press release from the DOJ http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-crt-030.html and an agreement they jointly signed with Arizona State University. And it looks more like this is just “hey watch it.” kind of thing. If you make it part of the curriculum, make sure it’s blind accessible. And the REAL BONE, seems to be that while the text is spoken the menus and tables aren’t. Egad, that could take 2-3 hours of work by the manufacturer!
“The current model of the Kindle DX has the capability to read texts aloud, so that the materials would be accessible to blind individuals, but the device does not include a similar text-to-speech function for the menu and navigational controls. Without access to the menus, students who are blind have no way to know which book they have selected or how to access the Kindle DX Web browser or its other functions. The technological “know how” to make navigational controls or menu selections accessible is available.”
Nice theory Pat, you’ve earned your Glenn Beck autographed tin hat.
Oh and by the way, Stalinism, would be rounding up millions of people and forcing them to work in squalid and dangerous conditions. Then shooting them. A little sense of proportion would be refreshing, and probably a bit more respectful to the those who suffered that treatment.
I work for the Fed. Government and they won’t let us buy them because they are considered a “personal appeal” item. No matter we can save the government money in books and save room storing books. No. They just look to darned fancy and someone might put a movie on it! What will we do when all the new books got to e-readers?
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