We are applying to stone ridge and visitation next year — does anyone know if Visi uses physical textbooks? |
Landon uses text books and has lockers |
Electronic textbooks are still textbooks. |
We prefer a physical book and less screentime, but that does beg the question: are there schools with NO textbooks, electronic or otherwise, for most classes?? |
This has come up fairly routinely on this site over the last year or two. The answers usually include: smaller, classical schools and Waldorf schools. My own DC goes to a small, classical grammar school with NO TECH and used books that get covered with brown paper every fall. It is the best. |
If you want your kids to benefit from using physical books, choose a school whose courses require them to read ENTIRE books - NOT necessarily textbooks, just entire works of fiction or nonfiction to build that endurance and reading pattern.
Using a textbook for humanities content implies there is only ONE set of info and exercises appropriate for a given course. Teachers can tell you that is far from true. Getting out of that one 5-pound book means a teacher can vary the instructional format and not let kids fall into the classic rut: read the chapter, do some exercises, have a quiz, then forget it all as you go to the next chapter. That's what kids learn to do in school unless teachers push them in different directions. I learned like that and now teach very differently. At the end of the day, the teacher will be far more important than the book in determining whether your kids are engaged and learning. |
Take up much less space in a backpack, though. |
What would be the source of information if they have no textbooks, physical or electronic? For classes like math and science in particular? |
We had science and math classes in public that were all driven by an app or website like IXL or random science articles piecing together the topic of the week. |
That is yet another reason to not send your kids to public school |
You could run a good--probably better--history class with the Oxford University Press "Very Short Introduction" series to build a framework and then high-quality chapters and articles by highly-accomplished historians (not Howard Zinn or Paul Johnson, which were my high school history teacher's authors of choice). But for science and math, text books are really irreplaceable. I used them throughout my university studies. |
History classes taught from one textbook are BORING. So many other sources to draw on that still reinforce literacy but engage the student many times more. Most students remember their history classes as a dull march through time when they don't have to be. |
Visi definitely does. My DD's backpack is extremely heavy, they have lockers but don't really use them due to short transition time between class. They also do not do the block schedule so unfortunately you need most of the books daily. |
OP, you may also want to ask which schools have free textbooks and which have parents order/pay for them. GDS provides all text books/novels (no additional charge)--students get physical copies. Holton has parents order/pay so students have the choice of ordering an electronic or physical book. |
At what grade level?? |