Is anyone else bothered that schools no longer use books?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Progressives: "Textbooks are so old fashioned - who cares?"

also progressives: "Why are students falling behind?!?!?"

It's not progressives - it's progressive education pedagogy that textbooks are the hallmark or crutch of a bad or lazy teacher. This isn't a liberal or conservative issue. It's a teacher school issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope, not bothered. Books are costly, out of date, and stagnant. Online resources are dynamic and cost effective.

FYI, online resources cost the same as print books. That's as it should be, they shouldn't be cheaper, since it's the same information. But people erroneously think that they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fun fact that goes through my mind any time someone mentions textbooks: I grew up in a communist dictatorship. We had textbooks in every class! Actually really good ones in math. And guess what: parents had to buy them for their children. Poor children received free school copies.

Compare to post-communist fighting-for-social-justice America in 2023 where schools don't buy textbooks because they lack the money and asking parents to buy them is considered anti-equity or whatnot because the poor couldn't afford it (and no one would want to subsidize them.) My MS kid now is being read to from a book because the teacher doesn't have enough copies for every child to read themselves.

Fwiw, the reason we're all complaining about this is because we had textbooks for all of our classes when we were young.

Ah, I love the Adele song.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid in elementary, middle and high school and none of my kids seem to use books. Of course they read in English but that is it! My high school kid is taking world history with no book. My middle school kid has no algebra book. My elementary school kid has no science book.

Does this bother anyone else?

I hate that everything is online. I want to buy my high school kid a book he can flag and highlight.

The on-line books have flag and highlighting tools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Progressives: "Textbooks are so old fashioned - who cares?"

also progressives: "Why are students falling behind?!?!?"

It's not progressives - it's progressive education pedagogy that textbooks are the hallmark or crutch of a bad or lazy teacher. This isn't a liberal or conservative issue. It's a teacher school issue.

Yeah, though generally you can predict where people will stand on the question from their political preferences, the textbook arguments are like the current incarnation of the reading wars: most conservatives are in favor of phonics, but you also see Social Justice Demands Science of Reading types. You can't get students to read Marx if they can't sound out the words.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope, not bothered. Books are costly, out of date, and stagnant. Online resources are dynamic and cost effective.

FYI, online resources cost the same as print books. That's as it should be, they shouldn't be cheaper, since it's the same information. But people erroneously think that they are.

They have better information because they are updated regularly. They also have interactive tools that help you work with the information and search tools. They are also better for kids with visual issues, dyslexia, executive function issues etc. because the supports are built in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope, not bothered. Books are costly, out of date, and stagnant. Online resources are dynamic and cost effective.

FYI, online resources cost the same as print books. That's as it should be, they shouldn't be cheaper, since it's the same information. But people erroneously think that they are.

They have better information because they are updated regularly. They also have interactive tools that help you work with the information and search tools. They are also better for kids with visual issues, dyslexia, executive function issues etc. because the supports are built in.

I wouldn't generalize this. A lot of textbooks designed over the last decade (online or not) do not measure up, particularly in Math. Here, the older the book, the better it is.
This is because of the prevailing trends in the "math education" academic departments and due to the exclusion of domain experts.

[Anonymous]

It's not the lack of textbooks that bother me so much, but the fact that the replacement they use for textbooks is so inferior. At least where I live, the public schools use online curriculum materials that are full of errors. It's true that textbooks sometimes have errors, but I have never seen a reputable published textbook have so many mistakes as the curriculum my daughter was exposed to in public school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope, not bothered. Books are costly, out of date, and stagnant. Online resources are dynamic and cost effective.

FYI, online resources cost the same as print books. That's as it should be, they shouldn't be cheaper, since it's the same information. But people erroneously think that they are.

They have better information because they are updated regularly. They also have interactive tools that help you work with the information and search tools. They are also better for kids with visual issues, dyslexia, executive function issues etc. because the supports are built in.

There's no guarantee an ebook will be constantly updated. All the other pros are features of the reading app, not the book itself. A pirated PDF with a good reader would have the same features.

[Anonymous]

I was bothered a lot as a teacher, because we really needed books for some things. We spent a lot of time creating things like homework sheets and problem sets. Believe it or not, teachers can make good lesson plans and interesting activities even if they have book to rely on so that they don't have to re-invent the wheel every day.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, well, this was not new. I was complaining about it 22 years ago. I came from an Asian country and I started buying my own textbooks etc and supplementing my kids at home.

Once I understood and accepted that no institution, school, teacher would want that my kid reaches or exceeds his natural academic abilities more than me, I accepted that the agenda of the school and the agenda of the parent are never the same.

Educate your kids yourself. Put in the time and get textbooks. Other are doing it for their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's pretty low on my list of concerns. It's not like textbook-learning was inspiring for lots of kids.

-Teacher

Lazy teacher

[Anonymous]

We use books at Christ Episcopal School in Rockville Maryland. We get a list over the summer - we buy the matchbook and the school provides the rest.

[Anonymous]

*math book

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very. In MCPS we finally got books for pre-cal and one other class. BUT, the school only had a classroom copy so you had to buy your own if you wanted it. None in Algebra or Geometry. No books to read either.

Huh. My precalc student has no text book. What school is this?