Macmillan made headlines at the end of last month with the announcement of their new DynamicBooks electronic textbook system.  DynamicBooks allows professors to customize Macmillan’s existing digital textbooks by adding chapters and class syllabi, embedding audio and video, and even rewriting passages.  All of the changes and additions to the books are clearly marked within, and so far there hasn’t been much of an outcry about the possibilities of content modification that the system enables.  Of course, the intent of DynamicBooks isn’t to change curricula, but rather to restructure the traditional textbook business model, which has suffered in recent years due to the digital revolution and the proliferation of online used-textbook stores.

But Macmillan and other companies seem, in this case, to be a bit short-sighted.  While the introduction of DynamicBooks might be beneficial for colleges and universities (which set their own curricula), what happens when it is introduced into public school systems, which follow state-mandated curricula?

This past Friday, the Texas Board of Education concluded the most recent battle in an ideological struggle over the nature of the state’s social studies curriculum.  Every decade, curriculum standards of the state are reviewed and voted upon.  The vote is an essential one, because all textbooks that are used in the public education system must be approved by the board in accordance with those standards.  If digital textbooks down the road are to be adopted by the Board of Education, and these textbooks are able to be modified on a school-by-school, teacher-by-teacher basis, their use essentially nullifies the democratic voice of the school board (whether or not you agree with their ideological positions).  This problem is then multiplied across the many states that use a similar curriculum voting system.

Now in Texas last week, the curriculum vote may have lead to an unwanted end, as a large conservative voting bloc enabled the teaching of creationism and the exclusion of many non-white historical figures from history textbooks.  But, as much as I might disagree with the result, I do agree with the process: the decision was arrived at democratically (and now, thank god, the entire state has 30 days on which to comment on the new standards).  It is a participatory process on a grand scale in which parents, teachers, educational professionals and others are invited to participate.  With individual textbooks, teachers and the DynamicBooks model, that process would be removed.

I’m not saying that there is potential for digital adoption by boards of education to happen any time soon.  The costs are too great for public schools, the political barriers too high–for now.  But DynamicBooks is setting something in motion by creating opportunities to amend completed text and “correct” other authors’ work, opportunities for censorship of and insertion of subjective opinion into objective, researched and edited work.  Maybe before changing traditional business models, major publishers should look at the potential their new models will have at changing traditional education models.  And the consequences that could have for the future of our education system, and in turn, our country.