1. Try to get a group of people to argue which textbook is the Master Textbook to Rule Them All. Things will fall apart. By popularity I would guess Stewart, but you’ll find a lot of Stewart haters out there.

2. Actually putting forth special effort to make the One Master Textbook isn’t any different than picking an already existing one. Nobody puts all the work in attempting to write a bad textbook. (And arguing that ‘it would be a team effort’ — well, plenty of textbooks are also team efforts. Often the solo efforts end up being more readable.)

3. Mathematical exposition has changed, historically, over time. This isn’t just manner of proof, but manner of writing and presentation and ordering and other important cognitive things. Assuming that a snapshot can perfect the presentation for all time is bizarre. The closest that’s ever been reached is by Euclid (and there are places that still use original Euclid) but it is very hard to argue there is no better way to write a geometry textbook.

4. Context matters: someone gunning to be a mathematician and someone aiming to be an engineer will value different things in their learning (and, indeed, there are sometimes different classes with different textbooks).

@Joel, you are right, too. I should be talking about ineffective teaching. Those teaching that way are victims of our “cowboy” approach to teaching, in which every teacher is supposed to go out their and figure it out for themselves. What profession works that way? If we make teaching a true profession with clear best practices and books and software, /then/ we can start talking about individuals who fail to measure up to those standards. I doubt there will be many.

Our calculus text books contradict each other so much that even Americans who take calculus in high school really do NOT know which version is correct, much less how to explain it.

At least give Rand Paul that much credit, even if he is dead wrong (and contrary to his father) regarding illegal aliens.

“If you have one person in the country who is, like, the best at performing heart surgery, that person maybe should perform every heart surgery in the country.”

I hope we’re finally taking seriously the problem of properly pacing students in the learning environment that best suits them, whether standard lecture classroom, accelerated or decelerated program, self-paced, on-line, etc., etc. Of course, we’re hobbled by limited resources from offering every learning mode for every course, but the emphasis on proper placement is one trend I heartily support.

If we propped up one teacher and said, “this person is the best, let’s use their style everywhere,” there would be no room for innovation (certainly not for three act lessons).

What a sad world it would be!