by Gary » Mon Mar 15, 2010 12:16 pm
This nonsense is thankfully repeated only every 10 years. We are now on the cusp of a sea-change w/r/t textbooks at all levels.
Many Universities have begun negotiations with publishers to use individual chapters and sections of books to comprise the texts of University-level coursework - all electronically. When these negotiations reach their foregone conclusion, gone will be the days of having to pay $100 for a university text of which the professor only refers to a chapter or two.
This will trickle down to the public schools as well. Most school children today are increasingly using "Blackboard"-type online resources so that parents can check up on schoolwork due or turned in, future assignments, weekly and daily reports from teachers to classes as a whole and to some parents in particular. Online references for students are linked from resources such as these - some paid for by the district, others freely available for all to see, use, and be used as reference. The electronic cut-and-paste textbook will be a reality Real Soon Now.
Yes, the parents will have to take an active role in the education of their children. They should anyway. But when the Texas Textbook Committee sits and makes its awful choices 10 years from now, they will have far less influence over the education of children everywhere, even in their own state.
Hopefully, this rising generation can be salvaged.
Gary
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Gary Skaggs, Norman, OK
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei