Composition Textbooks
I rarely teach with textbooks. In fact, I can't imagine any circumstances that I'd ever use a textbook for teaching a writing class again.
Mostly, I just haven't ever needed a textbook. The way I like to set up my class structure uses student writing as the text to study. I think it is invaluable to be able to have students learn not only from a critical examination of their peer's writing, but to also have them explore and analyze their own writing.
The problem I've always had with using textbooks is the use of a textbook in class (whether it be just a simple reader or a full blown writing guide) hearkens back to the old master-apprentice hierarchy in education. Even though instructors might step out of their role as the all encompassing source of information, textbooks do a rather nice job of stepping into that role.
The purpose of a textbook is to serve as a source of institutional knowledge and, consequently, a symbol and source of institutional power. Textbooks in writing classes threaten to suggest that the source of knowledge and empowerment is always something outside of the student. We turn to textbooks to show us what good writing is, how to properly construct an idea, and how to even go about the process of writing.
The textbooks that do not simply tell students how to write are still just as dangerous, if only because they are much more subtle about how they serve as institutional authority. Textbooks such as "Remix," while sexy and friendly to multi-modal composition gurus, is really no different than old time "write this way" books. While "Remix" avoids simple "this is what you do" sort of writing prescriptions, it STILL advocates and demonstrates an academic friendly way of exploring culture.
In a sense, the crime textbooks like these commit is to attempt to show students how to think about the world and culture around them. Whether you tell them how to think, or what to think, the result is always the same. It just moves the manipulation of the student's perceptions a little further up the river.
Personally, I like to think that every person holds a unique and infinitely valuable way of looking at the world. The more perspectives we allow into how we perceive the world around us, the greater our understanding will be.
Textbooks like "remix" aim at achieving hegemony and consensus. I'm more concerned with producing a polyphony of perceptions and ideas about the world, and celebrating those different voices.
And besides, college is expensive enough. Do students really need to buy another fifty dollar textbook?