Textbook crusader slams NBDB anew

It seems that the defective textbooks controversy is far from over.

In a letter to The STAR, Antonio Calipjo Go, the academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City who first exposed that grade school textbooks "Harnessing English Arts Today" and "Simply Science in the Next Century" published by Phoenix Publishing House are filled with errors, is criticizing the response of the National Book Development Board (NBDB) to his complaint regarding the two textbooks.

Go said he filed the complaint against the two textbooks with the NBDB, the government agency responsible for evaluating textbooks used in private schools, last July 4 and received a response Sept. 9 saying that the agency had contracted teams from two centers of excellence to evaluate the Phoenix textbooks.

"Harnessing English Arts Today" for Grade 3 has been reviewed while "Simply Science in the Next Century" for Grade 6 is still being reviewed. Nevertheless, the NBDB said the publisher’s attention has been called to the assessment of the evaluation team.

"We believe that their company will benefit from the evaluation towards the improvement of the textbook," the NBDB wrote Go.

Go, however, argued that his intention in filing the complaint was not for Phoenix to "benefit from the evaluation" but for the NBDB to validate his findings that the textbooks are really defective.

"Only a confirmation from the outside evaluators commissioned by the NBDB itself will force Phoenix to admit its guilt and correct its books. My intention, very clearly, is to improve the quality of these books, not to improve the money-making capacity of the publisher even more," he stressed.

He added that the NBDB did not even bother to tell him what the assessment of the evaluating team was.

Go also assailed a statement from the NBDB that since "Harnessing English Arts Today" was published before 2005, it is not subject to the NBDB’s 2005 guidelines regarding measures taken in cases of publication of poor quality textbooks. — Sandy Araneta