Issue 60 Death to Text Books April 22, 2013

Today we separate a little from hard core politics and reform and talk about education. In this case, we talk about text books and there future in our schools.

For the developed world: Text books have long served as reference tools for many generations of school students. They even had text books prior to the United States coming into existence. But today’s text books are overtly political. For the United States, the text books to be used in schools are based off what text books are to be used in Texas and California school systems. The reason being is that their governments decide which text books are to be used in all of their schools. As such, the rest of the country is subject to them due to it being cheaper to make a text book acceptable to their school system rather than make unique ones for each individual school or State.

Political Text Books: What people probably don't know is that the content of the text book is also defined by government. If they want more Black Americans represented, or Hispanic Americans represented then the governments at the State level will debate how much representation of each group will go in. From there the governments decide which people in history from those groups will be put in. Feminist groups try to make text books less masculine by trying to have words removed like "Fathers" from the "Founding Fathers", and other little things like that. There are even rules that define what cannot be placed in a text book. Such things as a picture of a mouse or a rat are banned because people may be afraid of them. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. Our text books are overtly subjected to politics and interest groups, and even then the text book may still get facts wrong. So what is the point in keeping them around in the age of the internet?

Digital Text Books: I advocate the complete removal of traditional text books from the class room. They have become politicized to the point that our school children (here in America at least) have lost any and all interest in them. In affect they have become boring due to the overt politicalization of the text book. What is needed is a switch to original source documents like the U.S. Constitution, the writings of Frederick Douglass and Dr. King Jr. If we want to learn hate, then we have to simply find a document expressing those feelings from the time period such as during the civil war. Children are not stupid, just impatient and thus they need something interesting to capture that interest. People regurgitating information in text books fails to due that. The traditional text book should be abolished and instead use an online data base filled to the brim with every aspect of human knowledge for students to choose from (looking at you Library of Congress). Why waste money buying a text book when a school can so much more cheaply educate their students with the original document like the Federalist Papers.

I do understand the argument that some of this information from original source documents can be a bit hard to read, but with a teachers help those more difficult parts can be made clear. Otherwise most of the documents themselves are fairly easy to grasp. I was afraid to read the Federalist Papers and my Constitutional law text book (contained actual case documents) because I feared not being able to grasp the concepts and writings. I read them though, and I understood them. When I had a question, I simply asked a question to my teacher. Learning became fun (note: I read those documents outside of regular class work as I was tired of being told what to believe with respect to politics and history).

The undeveloped world: For places without access to the internet (such places are vanishing quickly) text books in the traditional form will still be needed. For lets face it, a text book is a tool just like the internet, except that the internet has the ability to be a news source, a library and a communication device all rolled into one.

Conclusion: Math, and for the most part science (non-political parts) are non-controversial. History on the other hand is always controversial because everyone has to put their opinions in, and thus my advocating of online text books. Even work books can be online so long as the information can be sent to the teacher for checking. Publishers will however try to block this process every step of the way because it is what makes them the most money. But unfortunately for the publishers they are fighting a losing battle as budgets get tight, schools will have to look to other ways to save on cash and that may mean killing the text book as we know it today. The only way for the publishers to survive is to make online text books that schools will have to pay access to, but the traditional problems of politicalization will still be there (not to mention, why pay for information that you can access for free somewhere else). So lets hope that the government stops its protectionism soon so that our students can get the education they deserve not the political trash being shoved down their throat.