Fahrenheit 2013

Unless you've been hibernating under a rock in Antarctica for the last decade, you've probably heard a few things about The Khan Academy. 

Nerd Demi-God and less-cool version of Ironman, Bill Gates, has called the program “The future of education” which is high praise, no matter what you think about Windows 98.

With eBooks rapidly devouring the ink and paper publishing market and student loan debt threatening a generation of young scholars, the ivory towers of academia are slowly (oh so very slowly) beginning to realize that the ol’ fashion Socratic method of higher education needs a major overhaul. This long overdue reconstruction will not be without its casualties, chief among them being textbooks.

also tenure

Now, I have a lingering nostalgia for textbooks. On my first day of middle school in Maine we inherited the weather-beaten social studies tombs from the class ahead of us. Our first assignment was to make our own covers for the decaying texts out of butcher’s paper so that they could limp on for yet another year. Over the months, kids would decorate their homemade wrappers with stickers and doodles. It was a simpler time, a gentler time, a stupider time.

Seriously Maine, what is wrong with you?

I’m happy to say that the days of the homemade cover and the outdated textbooks beneath them are coming to a close. Soon, these quaint grade school relics will join microfiche and cave paintings in the dustbin of education media history. Our grandchildren will view them through museum glass and scoff at their primitive construction.

Don’t pity the textbook; the textbook is your oppressor. The textbook deserves what is coming to it. Think about it, when was the last time you reached for a textbook to look up some timely and relevant information? Don’t lie to yourself, that’s exactly what the textbooks want. By the time a book is researched, written, approved by committees, and finally printed, more relevant information on the topic has probably come to light. Now, I recognize that this doesn’t hold true for philosophy, literature, or the fine arts. But why would the sciences, mathematics, and history, fields which strive for the acquisition of constantly updated empirical facts and emergent theories, tie themselves to information transmission technology that hasn’t changed much since the Guttenberg printing press?

Worse than the financial burden of old fashion textbooks is the process these books go through just to get approval. Would you rather have kids getting their reading assignments from a professional educator with years of experience or from this guy?

It seems surreal, but due to the way textbooks are printed and distributed, our entire 21^st century education system hinges on the biased decisions of a few backwater yahoos. Oh, and if your little angels are having a hard time swallowing this tripe, doctors across the nation are more than willing to aid their academic digestion with a rainbow of mind-altering pharmaceuticals. That’s how far the Luddite dogmas of entrenched textbookocracy are willing to go to protect their doomed business model. Textbook publishers are in the business of profit, not content, because they have to leave that to the politicians. This is no way to run an education system.

Thankfully, technology has reached the point where we no longer have to wait idly by until government policies rise to meet the challenge. E-readers like the Kindle, iPad, and Google Nexus are getting cheaper and lighter by the month. I predict that within five years, savvy companies will be handing out these gadgets for free on every college campus around the world. God willing, they’ll be doing the same thing at every grade school. Innumerable texts will be available for free via Google Books and other services putting a Library of Congress in every child’s backpack. Local municipalities will be able to weigh in on which books they feel ought be part of their curriculum without foisting their views on the rest of the nation. Best of all, the textbook beasts which have dominated our schools for so long will finally starve to death.

University students, you can help speed the process along by boycotting that den of inequity your schools dare to call a “bookstore.” Parents, you can equip your children with reading material they will actually use and be a voice for modernization in your local PTA. Teachers, principals, and school board members besieged by funding limitations, this is the time to cast off the old models and put your dollars where they will do the most good.

It’s the Information Age, let’s teach like it.