I was going to include this as part of my Fortnightly Links, but it’s too big an issue to deal with in such a cursory way. Wesley Fryer stirred things up a bit recently in a post entitled A call for a textbook purchasing moratorium. As suggested by the title, Wes thinks that it’s time for schools to stop buying textbooks. Is this a good idea? Here’s my thoughts… :)

Here’s the reasons Wes puts forward in his post:

1. Textbooks are expensive (“up to $100 each”)
2. “The era of the digital curriculum has dawned.”
3. A textbook moratorium guides schools towards 1:1 laptop initiatives.
4. Textbooks do not allow students to create content.
5. Stopping buying textbooks does not mean the end of libraries/research facilities – “we need to give students in our schools MORE access to MORE diverse texts, to encourage as much READING as we can.”
6. Free curriculum materials are available.
7. 99% of schools in the USA are “wired”.
8. Other things which are hampering progress (“seat time”, “bell schedules”) are tied into the textbook-buying/using culture.
9. Purchasing textbooks is not “fiscally responsible”.

I can only give my (UK-based) point of view on this. That means I can’t comment on concepts that are alien to me such as “seat time” and textbooks costing up to the equivalent of £50 each. I can, however, comment on the rest. Just for the record and before I air my opinions, Stephen Downes is for the idea of a moratorium (“wasteful and expensive and isn’t preparing children for the future”) whereas Vicki Davis is against it (“a digital only classroom at this time is as untenable as a paper-only classroom”). Karyn Romeis talks about her great love of books but, I think, confuses novel-reading with textbooks somewhat. The two are chalk and cheese: you won’t catch me with a copy of a GCSE textbook before I nod off to sleep at night! ;) (she does however, make some valid points about the textbook issue being a 1st-world problem)

Never being one to shirk controversy, let’s stir things up a little further and compare the textbook situation to gun laws in the USA and UK. In America, as far as I understand it, to own a handgun is legal. In the UK it is not. More people die in the USA from shootings than they do in the UK. This leads to broadly two camps of opinion:

• Guns are made for one purpose which is to shoot bullets. As bullets kill people it is likely that there will be an increase in fatal shootings if more people own firearms.
• Inanimate objects do not cause people to do things. “Guns don’t kill people; people do.”

Analogously, then, there are two broad camps when it comes to textbooks:

• Textbooks are made for a dominant method of instruction. If they are purchased it is more likely that they will be used for that purpose.
• The use of textbooks depends upon the teacher – i.e. upon the underlying pedagogy.

Wes Fryer seems to subscribe to the first of these views – that textbooks somehow cause methods of instruction. Aristotle would laugh at him: it makes no sense to say that inanimate objects can cause animate things (such as humans) to act in a particular way. I would lean towards the latter view, but reject both Wes and Aristotle’s conclusions. That is to say that textbooks can be used in a variety of creative and useful ways; nevertheless they do have a symbolic nature which can psychologically influence teachers.

I use textbooks. I tried not to when I first started teaching, but I just burned myself out. It’s the difference between the following. Yes skills are more important than content, but the former can’t be taught in abstraction. And, as a teacher, I can’t be expected to create the amount of content I need for 23 periods of 50 minutes per week. It’s the difference between:

Going back to the points listed earlier that Wes made, I think a few are fallacious. First of all, it is simply not true to assume that paper-based textbooks mean that students don’t create content. It depends upon the pedagogy which informs the ecology or habitat in which the textbooks are used. It’s fair enough to say that if textbooks are being used to prop-up a transmission model of education, but not if they’re being used selectively, intelligently and in conjunction with other resources.

Second, textbooks – if they are as pernicious as Wes considers them to be – are merely a symptom of the underlying problem in education. They are not a cause of it. To lump textbook purchasing with other problems with education is not clear-headed and not helpful when trying to change education for the 21st-century.

Third, textbooks provide coherent and rigorously-checked resources relevant to the courses followed in schools. Digital curricula and resources, can be a mixed blessing: they can lead to a much less-cohesive approach where content is covered but skills not learned. I’ll admit that I’m currently doing some work for Folens publishers (digital resources, however). But not all skills that are needed in the 21st century, after all, involve looking at glowing screen… :p

The trouble is, however, that it’s a vicious circle. In order for the situation to obtain where textbooks are no longer needed, investment has to be made on an administrative/leadership level in terms of purchasing and strategy. However, the stimulus for this can’t come without pressure from teachers. But how can teachers know anything different from what they’re used to unless they’re aware and have used the alternatives? Perhaps that is where Wes’ rallying cry comes in… :D