In regular classes, a teacher could take their time over the course of a semester, feeding students the material bit by bit. With face-to-face teaching, it was easy to communicate whatever thoughts the students had.
But textbooks were different. They taught students all the same, yet offered no feedback. It was like having to prepare every lesson for an entire semester before the semester even began. There could be no deviation or mistakes, because there was no chance to correct them!
At the same time, they had to consider the level of the students using the textbook. A problem that students from Tsinghua or Peking University could understand might be incomprehensible to students from an ordinary third-tier university. What level of student should the textbook target?
The length of the textbook was another major problem. If it was like some Western textbooks, rambling on and giving a huge number of examples, it would certainly make things easier for slower students to understand. But the amount of knowledge would undoubtedly be diluted, and the book would become absurdly thick. If it was like the old domestic textbooks, condensed and crammed full of useful material, the length could be controlled, but would the difficult sections cause students to waste energy and force them to expand their studies elsewhere?
Actually, none of these counted as particularly fatal problems. With enough polishing, they could make do.
The most fatal problem was the content!
There was simply too much knowledge in any given field. What exactly should be taught to the students?
For many students, a textbook was the main framework for constructing their knowledge. It was bound to affect the academic direction of a large number of students, and might even influence the future development of the entire field!
Song He was under tremendous