Schools Without Books?

In what seems like a life time ago, I was hired by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill to co-author a new science textbook for them.  It was to be written for middle school sixth graders, part of a new science series.  It had a red cover with the photo of a space walking astronaut as the main focus.   When you write such a text, you are also responsible for creating not just the body of the text, but the teaching materials, activities, lesson plan suggestions, tests and teacher’s edition as well as the student text.  It was a gang of work and took most of a year.  The money was good, but I wouldn’t do it again. 

            Evidently, the time of those paper textbooks is coming to an end.  In an article by Justin B. Hollander in the New York Times, Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, has declared that textbooks should be replaced by digital learning technologies, e-readers, the internet, Web sites, etc.  Duncan says paper books are, “obsolete” and wants them replaced entirely with digital media.  In Hollander’s column he counters this futuristic look at learning with several important points that favor retaining paper.  He makes some good points.

            Both Hollander, and I agree that digital media have a useful and growing role to play in modern education.  But we both also have some reservations about throwing, “hard copy” learning into the trash heap and lighting a match.

            The thrust of the article (which I highly recommend) is that change for the sake of change is short-sighted and frequently only partially right if not out-right wrong.  He notes, by way of example, that when the car became popular we trashed our mass transit systems, only to find we need them now.  He also points out that the research on how well students learn via digital media is sketchy, inconclusive and incomplete.  As an educator who has studied the brain, I know that young children respond to multiple stimuli which include a strong bias toward the tactile.  For that reason I believe that paper is a necessary medium. 

            Schools are not going to save money on e-readers either.  They are going to need an e-reader for each student, keep it up-graded and in good repair.  Have you seen what the textbooks look like after a year back and forth in the backpack?  This is going to be an expensive proposition. 

            There is also the fact that a book on a shelf is always available for reference.  No electricity, no batteries, no need to connect with an internet—it is there for anyone to pick up and use.  Like Abe Lincoln, we can read them by candlelight.  How many pictures of your family would you have if you could no longer call up the digital images on the computer?  You get my point.  We have books that are thousands of years old.  Paper deteriorates, but it seems to have a longer shelf life than floppy disks.  Books of all kinds are a lasting, affordable, easily accessed source of both entertainment and information. 

 

            I have one more concern which Mr. Hollander does not mention.  When I hear Arne Duncan talking about educating our students using digital learning, I want to know who is feeding information into the machine at the source.  Call me jaundiced, broken and bitter, but I don’t trust anyone in government to make that decision.  I trust science texts produced by members of NSTA.  I trust mathematics texts produced by members of NCTM.  Have you tried to read anything produced by the federal government?  Thank you!

 

            Walk cautiously into the future and keep the faith.