- Image by Amin Tabrizi via Flickr
The other day, I got quite depressed by watching a discussion on Twitter about textbooks. Not, you will notice, ebooks or even etextbooks but good old fashioned hardbacked or paperbacked textbooks; the sort we used to use when I was at school (and I’m talking about as a pupil not as a teacher). Does education find it really hard to let go of the past or does it just go around in cycles?
Even though I didn’t agree with almost anything I saw on that discussion, it did make me think about textbooks and the relative advantages and disadvantages of them.
Information
There is usually much more information in a textbook than on, say, a website. This is a big advantage in favour of textbooks. At one time it was claimed that CD roms would replace textbooks, but CDs and even DVDs just never seemed to hold as much information upon a topic as did the average textbook. Sure, the CD or DVD had the advantage that it could contain animation, video, photographs and interactive quizzes, all of which might be more difficult, if not impossible, in a textbook but in terms of actual amount of information, the textbook wins.
A disadvantage of the textbook is that it could soon go out of date or become inaccurate as things changed, whereas a website could be easily changed to keep it up to date and relevant.
Relevance and Appropriateness
One of the good things about textbooks is that you could have a textbook written on a subject for young pupils, have another textbook written on the same subject for older pupils and others written for adult learners. You rarely seem to find this, though, for websites or CD roms, though there are some for young pupils, most websites appear to be aimed at an almost ‘ageless’ audience. You used also to get textbooks that progressed in series with the learners; so you’d have book 1, book 2, or book 3 or beginner, intermediate, advanced … you rarely seem to get such progression in digital media.
Critical Thinking
Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of a textbook is that a class or school often only use one, so it had only one source of information which was also presented in only one way. By using the web, a school could have access to several different sources which could present different viewpoints on the same topic. The web could therefore better allow for the development of critical thinking in the learner whereas in the days of textbooks, the learner just assumed the textbook was correct and presented the only view. However, this critical thinking could only go so far because websites and other digital media rarely present as much information, upon which to be critical, as textbooks.
Engaging
This is a tricky one as I’m sure we can all think back to any textbooks we used to learn in school and I daresay ‘engaging’ is not a term we would immediately apply to them. TV looks much more engaging, CDroms look much more engaging, the web looks much more engaging, .. at least they did when they first came out, do these media still look as engaging as they once did?
So it seems that textbooks had some advantages over modern digital media but also some drawbacks. So should they be used or barred in 21st century learning?
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Post Revisions:
This post has not been revised since publication.
Re your statement: “There is usually much more information in a textbook than on, say, a website” – I totally disagree with the sentiment but with the reservation of inserting “a variety of” – before ‘website(s)’. After your opening statement you repeat this view under the heading ‘Critical Thinking’.
As a teacher I have never expected students to rely on one source of information – I never bought full sets of text-books for a classroom. I used to teach children from an early age to learn to compare sources and come to their own conclusions. This is the begining of establishing good research skills and helping children to argue their own opinions from an understanding of the various arguments.
My own specialism, for the last five years, is ePortfolios. I have in excess of 100 textbooks on this one subject and many more downloaded papers. I can assure you that no one text-book or even a handfull of textbooks can compete with getting on line. I have read on-line an average of at least 10 articles a day, every day, for the last five years. Textbooks, although useful, are a rapidly dying cause, only subsidised by those writers who want to make a profit instead of contributing via Creative Commons.
Best Wishes,
Ray T
Ray,
Thanks for your comment and sharing your insight.
It’s not really fair to change what I say and then disagree with it!
Your approach to teaching was exceptional in using a variety of sources and seeking to develop learners’ research skills. Sadly this would not appear to have been the norm in schools.
I am not convinced that textbooks are a rapidly dying cause but it may be just the speed of their dying over which we’d disagree. There certainly needs to be a change in the way sources of knowledge or learning is disseminated and getting this fully online is, in my view, key. Your experience of downloading papers and articles is indicative of how effective this method can be.
Just consider how much more effective it could be if we could improve the availability, improve the format and improve the devices upon which they can be read!