Caryl, I can certainly understand expecting the worst here. I do think the idea has potential, even if it takes awhile to achieve it.
My niece went to the Illinois Math and Science Academy, a public boarding school for gifted kids. One of the things that impressed me about this school was that they don't use textbooks at all. The teachers create all the class materials. Her father's complaint about the school was that, "The teachers don't teach!" I don't think anyone missed having textbooks, though. Creating textbooks has a lot of politics involved in it. School boards cannot be offended by anything in History or Biology textbooks, and the dumbest, most easily offended school boards in the country end up choosing what textbooks get used by most of the country. A couple of years ago I took a vacation in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, etc. I learned a lot of things about U.S. History that I wish I had learned as a kid. For instance, the first ships in the U.S. Navy were captured from the British by pirates. In colonial Williamsburg, church attendance was required by law, and you could be punished for arriving late. If you wanted to attend a church other than the official one you could only do that with permission from the government, and you still had to tithe to the official church. What is the likelihood of any of that information making it into a high school textbook? I read a story that a Biology teacher got in trouble for pointing out that men and women have the same number of ribs! Mike Huckabee claimed during the last election that most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were clergymen, and *nobody* corrected him. Having digital textbooks might be a way to get around that, because different states could publish their own books at a low cost. States could use each other's books, etc. I'm not saying it would be easy but it would be possible. The school boards in Texas and elsewhere would not be able to hijack the whole process. Eventually this should lead to better textbooks. If the books were in the public domain (and they should be) then cheap printed copies of the textbooks should also be available. James Simmons > Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 09:53:04 -0700 > From: Caryl Bigenho <[email protected]> > Subject: [IAEP] Some Comments on Digital Textbooks In California > To: Community Support Volunteers -- who help respond t > <[email protected]>, IAEP SugarLabs > <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > Hi... > Adam Holt alerted me to Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal to go digital with > textbooks statewide in California high schools, starting with math and > science this year. Here is my retired teacher's view of the situation... > > > (See: http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12455/) > > > The Good: > > > Textbooks can be up to date and, hopefully, will be. > > > The Bad > > Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests teachers can "print out pages for students who > do not have computers." Who pays? Probably the teachers! This really shows > no commitment to supplying the schools with computers > > The Ugly > > > Textbook publishing is a big, competitive business. Lots of profits are to > be made in publishing textbooks. What incentive will there be to publish > free online books? You can bet they will not be free for long. > Hummmmm...Maybe we do need Jerry Brown to run for governor. He had a huge > commitment to educational technology when he was in office. > Any comments? > Caryl _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
