Keith,
Here's a little watch-for-this assignment, should you take an interest in it.
My impression is that elementary-school and high-school textbooks in recent decades have generally favored lavish production, with lots of multi-color illustrations, presumably to attract the attention of students, who are assumed to be prone to boredom. For an example of what I mean, next time you are in a bookstore, page through Glenn Beck's latest book, "Broke." Like his previous book, "How to Argue with an Idiot," there is some picture or graph on almost every page to break up the monotony of bland black-on-white text. It's nice and razzle-dazzle, but uncongenial to presenting a sustained argument—too sound-bitey. What's worse, the background of the pages is mottled, which visually makes the text needlessly hard to read.
Do college textbooks show this same trend toward flashiness? Take a look at your students' textbooks, especially in subjects other than yours. I wonder how much such high production values raise the price of textbooks.
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 