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What does PARSNIPs have to do with a publisher's ideology?

When is a book not just a book, but rather refracted knowledge?

What is hidden behind the printed words and colourful images?

Rachel Long, expert in marketing, representing not just her beloved team at Macmillan Education but also the fierce devotion her fellow marketers in all publishing houses have in designing their products. She explains that there is a determined ideology behind students books that is intended to empower children, an invaluable resource in teacher's books created to ease the load of classroom educators, and the movement toward diversity and acceptance in each and every image chosen for publication.

Listen and decide for yourself if Rachel's message changes your mind about publisher's books in the classroom and how we can use them more fluidly and divergently, inside and outside of the classroom, with students and their parents.

Activities to use this podcast in our language classes:

1. Rachel talks about her publisher very carefully choosing the images in the books so they reflect today's multi-cultural world. Suggestion: Ask your students, in pairs, to spend 10 minutes looking through their student book and identifying 10 images that reflect themselves and things that are familiar to them at home.
2. Rachel talks about PARSLEYS - seven (7) tabu subjects publishers are not supposed to include in the Student Books. Suggestion: Write those seven subjects on the board and ask students, in groups of three, to talk about each of them and why they are tabu. (politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics -isms, pork)
3. Rachel talks about parts of the books that the teachers may not use because they are so busy. The teacher guide is top of the list Suggestion: Open your teacher guide and randomly pick a page, and promise yourself that this year, you'll use the publisher's suggestion you've just found.

Music: Ariane Sailer