The Value of Textbooks
Recent debates have arisen in the education media over whether printed textbooks are any longer of value. A June 9 Edutopia article asks “Should Textbooks Still Play a Role in Schools?” Many teachers, more likely younger rookies than veterans, are spending up to 20 hours per week cruising the internet for curriculum and teaching materials to download, with online exercises developed by a growing industry (Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, Teacher Lingo, Educents). And some digital worksheets, group projects, and class assessments---sometimes aligned to state assessments---may be downloaded for free. This saves the school district the cost of buying textbooks, but does not recognize the additional time consumed by their teachers developing their own textbook “replacement.” Nor does it factor in the exorbitant cost of providing Chromebooks to each student, a technology that requires turnover replacement each three years and which well exceeds the costs of printed textbooks. And while textbooks are taken home for study and homework, school laptops are often restricted to school
