I like when people realize their financial limitations and look for ways to cut their spending and live within their means. And now the governor of CA is being forced to look for solutions of his own to his state’s disastrous financial situation (they’re expected to run out of money in about 2 months), and he’s looking for ways to cut back government spending. (I often have wondered if govermental spending has any limitations, so it’s nice to see that there is a point when even government officials recognize they can’t keep on spending – too bad things have to be extremely desperate before cuts are considered.) One of the things he’s planning is to cut out conventional textbooks. What does he plan to use instead? Online textbooks.
I commend the government officials for trying to find solutions out of their dilemma. This would be a big savings, and it was also pointed out that it will be better physically for the students since they don’t have to shlep around all those heavy books.
As far as the value of the texts themselves, in my opinion, getting rid of most textbooks isn’t much of a loss. I’d be hard pressed to think of less effective ways to learn than from standardized textbooks, unless it’s to listen to a teacher droning on and telling the students the exact information they could read for themselves in their textbooks. But replacing them with online versions of the same dreary works isn’t going to improve student learning or retention. Though I love to read, I see online reading as a necessary evil (I’m sure my kids would be surprised by this, since I do so much of it); it takes more time and I don’t think it’s healthy to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. And while the kids wouldn’t have the physical strain on their shoulders from lugging around a heavy knapsack, they’d have eye strain to consider.
In our homeschooling, I try to avoid textbooks as much as possible. Textbooks are designed to be politically correct above all else (and as such are a venue to promote values that I don’t share), and just as bad, their accuracy of the facts is often questionable (this isn’t a matter of opinion – do some research if you want to learn more).
Some companies have tried to eliminate the political aspect by choosing selections that are more neutral. When my ds was in ninth grade last year, I had the opportunity to review his English textbook – it was a kosher version of regular literature texts (Mesorah publishes them under another company name). They use selections of classic works and stories that don’t have the less desirable elements of typical literature selections. I thought it was a nice idea, and then I read through a good part of the textbook. Gosh, it was dull – and I have a high comprehension level and love to read! It didn’t suprise me when my son fell asleep repeatedly when reading the stories that were assigned. In their efforts to take out anything objectionable, they weren’t left with much of interest. I commented on this to the English teacher at parent conferences, and it was clear that though she didn’t want to say so outright, she agreed with me.
In place of textbooks, I prefer what Charlotte Mason termed living books – books that are engaging, written by people who care about their subject matter – not committees. And of course, hands on learning opportunities can’t be beat for integration and assimilation of material.
As far as CA and the choice they’ve made, while they won’t improve students’ learning, at least they’ll be saving money!
Avivah
>I often have wondered if govermental spending has any limitations
State government spending has real limitations since states can’t print money. The federal spending, however, is potentially unlimited. (Not without consequence, of course…)
Boo to online reading, yay to living books. I totally agree. The real thing is much better than snatches of this and that.
Oh, Jennifer, I better not respond to your comment about the feds unlimited printing capacity – I’ll seriously start ranting. And that will ruin my efforts to keep my political inclinations off of my blog. 🙂
When i took a history class online and my text books were hence online…
Well lets just put it this way- the tests were online. I copied and pasted the text books into a word document, and when it came time for the tests (it was open book), i did a search in the word document for the relevant words, copied and pasted the answers… and never ended up bothering to READ the text books— they were that boring. They’re no fun for me on a good day, and when i could get out of reading them by just copying and pasting… well, i took the easy way out. THAT, in my opinion, is the biggest issue with online text books.
🙂 I won’t get you going on monetary policy 🙂
Back to the textbooks:
In The Well-Trained Mind, they recommend using a textbook sort of like an outline for the subject, on which to base reading of “real books”. That makes sense to me. When I was teaching high school, I would skim the chapter in the text book just to remind myself what topics I needed to cover (like an outline) — I certainly didn’t teach page-by-page from the book (let alone read aloud from the book!). And my students read lots of primary sources and more engaging materials.
Textbooks can also be a very handy reference when you just need to look up a specific topic, like how to convert grams to moles or how to graph y=x+1. Come to think of it, I think textbooks are more useful in math and sciences than in history or literature. Very few textbooks are engaging enough that you’d want to curl up and read them for pleasure (there *are* a few exceptions, though), but they can come in handy for reference. Of course, nowadays, students are much more likely to use the internet for quick reference (for better and for worse).
If the textbook is being used primarily as an outline and a reference, then there’s no reason not to have it online. In fact, that makes it more readily searchable. And you can always print specific pages if you need them.
If you go to Google books, you can see the table of contents for nearly any book in print you can think of (or at least so it seems!). I’ve used it several times to make an outline of a course. My husband is an instructional designer for a medical school and uses the same thing very often to come up with syllabi.
J – We use textbooks for math; I agree that texts for math and science (particularly math) are much more valuable than for history and literature. If most people were using textbooks in the way you use them,then having them online would be a no brainer. But most students are expected to use them for substantial amounts of reading, and usually as the sole source of reading.
Alpidarko – this is a great suggestion. Thanks for mentioning it!