The best-selling of inferior teaching aids, who should be responsible?
At present, it's the beginning of a new semester. The sales of teaching aids for middle and primary school students are booming. There are many kinds of teaching aids with plenty of gimmicks. An insider who has participated in the editing of teaching aids introduced that promotions like "recommended by famous teachers" or "recommended by the proposition group" are mostly gimmicks. Some teaching aids even claim to be recommended by the "National Junior High School Entrance Examination Proposition Research Group", which is completely fictitious. This insider also mentioned that some book merchants have no real qualifications to edit teaching aids, but they can cobble together a book within a few days, producing hundreds of teaching aids in a semester, then buy book numbers for market sales. Reporters also found that many teaching aids have poor printing quality, with powder-like ink on the paper. (Beijing Morning Post, March 4th)
The worst kind of inferior teaching aids are those that steal other books' numbers, patch together legally published teaching aid content, pirate them, bribe relevant personnel from grassroots education departments or schools, and sell them to students. These teaching aids not only have poor print quality but also, due to careless piecing together, are full of errors, easily misleading students. Because there's no cost involved in buying book numbers or editing, handling such teaching aids can certainly yield the maximum profit, but it's undoubtedly illegal operation. With the recent crackdowns by news publishing and education departments, and the enhanced rights protection awareness of students and their parents, the risks have increased, so this phenomenon isn't as common as it was in previous years.
Currently, more common versions of teaching aids have real book numbers and can be openly sold in Xinhua Bookstores and wholesale markets without interference from news publishing and education departments. However, real book numbers don't necessarily mean qualified books. The most popular middle and primary school teaching aids and public servant examination guides usually have several problems: one is serious homogenization of content, with piecing together and plagiarism rampant; two, exaggerated or fabricated promotional phrases; three, numerous errors including misspellings, mistakes in questions and reference answers, etc. If strictly following the standards set by administrative regulations and departmental rules regarding book quality management, especially teaching aid management, a large part of these teaching aids with real book numbers would likely be considered defective.
So, who should be blamed for the best-selling defective tutoring books? Blaming the directly involved publishing companies and book merchants is easy, but the issue is that any market-oriented entity determines its quality management strategy based on the regulatory environment. Although relevant departments have formulated many laws and regulations regarding book quality management and teaching aid management with clear standards, these standards must be implemented and activated to make market entities truly comply. As the report mentioned, a teaching aid clearly marked as "compiled by the National Junior High School Entrance Examination Proposition Research Group" could still be listed for sale in Xinhua Bookstore. Why didn't relevant departments ban it? How did such a book pass the review? Did Xinhua Bookstore and other channels verify the authenticity of the teaching aid's promotion as required? Similarly, how could the obvious quality issues in the teaching aid content escape the scrutiny of multiple parties including the publisher (who bought the book number), the press and publication department, and Xinhua Bookstore? Don't regulators need to take responsibility?
Whenever the topic of book quality issues and false advertising comes up, some people will bring up the book number issue, even calling for a ban on publishers transferring book numbers and prohibiting book merchants from purchasing them. This view is quite laughable because even if publishers monopolize book number resources, it cannot guarantee book quality. There are also a large number of low-quality, unsold books that are produced by publishers themselves. Many existing publishers manage book quality better than shell companies, but this precisely reflects the drawbacks of book number control - because the current domestic publishing system dictates that whether it's a cultural publishing company of any category or an individual book merchant, they must rely on publishers to publish books. In short, regardless of whether the book is good or bad, they need to buy book numbers from publishers, which induces many companies and book merchants to focus on short-term gains and dare not invest too many resources in quality management. If the book number control were truly relaxed, ensuring necessary and effective administrative supervision and industry management, allowing equal competition between publishers and private cultural publishing companies, and ensuring timely and sufficient punishment for those who violate book quality management regulations, it would be possible to create a mechanism that incentivizes the production of good books, "responsible" books, and trustworthy books, naturally solving the problem of inferior teaching aids.
Relevant link: http://www.morningpost.com.cn/bjcb/html/2012-03/04/content_147094.htm
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