The Pilot Program - Essay Example

"Well, have you ever seen a Rorschach ink blot" "Yes, but only when I was in therapy." That was supposed to be kept confidential."The class is having a field day with this. They are at an impressionable age." I gazed at the upside down frog. It was disturbing and I agreed. These books need to be returned. I called the publisher and the textbook salesman informed me, "Its a pilot program. There are no replacements and they are all alike." I just need to remove page 192. Which I did.Unfortunately, the text now read from page 190 to 193.

The text about the frog met up, in mid sentence, with the description of another distant ancestor of this prehistoric anomaly. I decided to remove another page.The next few pages were the chapter review and quizzes. Since I had removed some of the material I thought it was unfair to leave the remaining quizzes in the book so I removed three more pages.This brought me to the chapter on Evolution. I had to stop and consider if anyone had examined this chapter to insure it met state guidelines. I removed 19 more pages.

The next chapter on Reproduction was suspect and I decided to refer it to the Board of Education. After careful and deliberate review they determined that the terminology, especially with respect to cell division, was too explicit for a 13-year-old. Chapter 7: 43 pages were removed. The book now went from a hacked up version of chapter 6 directly into Chapter 8, which is the section on Primates, with a smiling picture of a monkey, Finally I was in familiar territory. Parents were outraged that I had gutted the textbook.

They had no clue as to what was missing. I told them I had removed the pages as the direct result of a request by the publisher. That seemed to placate them until they became curious about what had been removed.I demonstrated the conflicting views of the frog. I told them I was not a legal scholar, just the textbook coordinator, but was legally compelled to remove certain sections on constitutional grounds. The parents grew louder.I produced the missing pages from Chapter 6. They asked me what followed Evolution.

I said "Reproduction and Primates." I showed them the picture of the friendly monkey. The monkey was smiling. This brought about a pleasant quiet across the wild and unruly crowd. There is just something about a smiling monkey. Now we were on common ground.I had to burn all 28 pilot textbooks. They were deemed unusable and the pilot program never got off the ground. The new pilot program in biology is a field trip. The students go into the woods and identify several forms of fungus and plants.

Two students have contracted poison ivy and one has fallen incapacitated due to the ill effects of mosquito bites. Another day, another pilot program. I'm just the Textbook Coordinator.