Text book discrepancies
What do you do when your students find a text book discrepancy?
The reason I replied to this thread is I also teach automotive. We find mistakes in the text book and repair manuals all the time. I reinforced what they have learned because they were able to identify that mistake.
Such as torque specs.
In most cases you can clear up these by explaining some information might have changed or the information might not apply to the lesson you are working on. In other cases you may have to explain that a better way of doing that test or exercise has been developed and you are now going to use the new method. The last thing to do and in some cases the worst thing you can do is explain that people make mistakes even on text books or manules.
This is also a great opportunity to get the students involved. Make it an assignment for them to figure out what piece of information is correct. Perhaps, taking your class to the library or computer lab so that they may do research. Occasionally, I will give extra credit to the class if they are able to clarify the information.
I follow a very similar plan to Mr. MacCormack's. I've been teaching auto tech for 3 1/2 years now, and I'll go prove which information is true, and which is not. I'll let the students do this also, if time permits. I then create seperate handouts clarifying the info in the service manuals. The amount of mistakes in auto shop manuals is scary.
I also find that the books we are required to use for HVAC are full of inaccuracies. I do aknowlege to the studentsa that there are some things that could be better said; but I try not to run the books down since they have paid good money for them.
I commend the students and explain that it isn't uncommon to find errors in any kind of book, even a good text book. It really is a terrific thing for the student to find, because that means they have paid attention and learned something in order to discover the problem. Since we are instructors trying to educate, it should be viewed as the positive event it is. Once discovered, I point the error out to the students and you could certainly inform the author of the mistake as well.
In our technical school we use industry service manuals as textbooks and at times there are updates or information that needs to be updated even in the same model year. The way we handle that situation is to inform the students that, should this be the case the instructor is the final word on changes and that it will be the information used.
This is not uncommon in some fields. I have to use outdated books most of the time to teach about Information Technology and all you can really do is to acknowledge the problem and use the oppurtunity to create an activity to find the correct or most recent information.
This happens quite a bit in my class as we use industry standard handbooks for mechanical design. 2 of them share mostly the same information but occasionaly conflict with each other. As long as my student has documented where the answer or information used for an assignment was found (and after I verify it) I will give them the credit.
We must all remember that no person is perfect and since the texts are written by people they are often written with some bias.
No if I found information to be blatenly incorrect in a text i would gather together the information required to prove it wrong and when we cot to that portion of the text I would provide handouts for clarity and dictate that the handout trump the text for this particular issue.
Chris
