Broken textbooks. . . Part 1

from ed4wb

Introducing Plearn
In their book, Disrupting Class, authors Christensen, Johnson and Horn state that innovation and change often happen when individual actors work outside of the regulated sectors, offering goods and services through independent commercial channels, eventually getting noticed by the regulatory systems once enough people, through their own choice, opt out of the dominant offering. The authors mention that change rarely happens from within institutions, being that those institutions are more likely to hammer down the sharp edges of innovation to fit their current way of thinking, in the process, sustaining the approach it has always used.

Stimulus Package Will Not Change the Laws of Physics
"It’s less likely they are learning about cutting edge thinkers like Amory Lovins, who’ve yet to be fossilized into a textbook. With a little probing, and with education based on tackling real issues, it’s not hard to find brilliant thinking."

Participatory learning.net
Are textbooks good vehicles for the promotion of diverse thought, or are their business ties and testing objectives too limiting for this type of task? What do you do to provide yourself with a richly diverse mental ecology?