Updated Text Books

I get tired of hearing people complain about the dated textbooks used by the schools. Is one plus one no longer two? Did Shakespeare change his works last year? Did Columbus no longer discover America in 1492? Okay, so maybe that last one is legitimately flawed.

Things don’t change that fast. The bulk of the material covered in school is unchanged between years, and updating text books does not actually update the material. When people complain about the print date of a book, they seem to overlook the contents. The contents rarely become obsolete.

Sometimes, updated contents are actually worse. American history is an example of this. Someone who loves America is more likely to study the nation’s history for these textbooks. This adds bias. If they are building off of the textbooks that they have read, they are adding the original authors bias to their own bias. If they are building off of textbooks that were written by die-hard Americans who were building off of older textbooks, they are adding bias to bias to bias. As a result, each generation of American history is likely to become less accurate.

In recent years, I have encountered more discussions about the books being used. Somehow, we now view changing books as a changing how kids are taught. Square roots are now on page 58 instead of 52? It’s a whole new method of teaching!

Actually, it’s not. Having a teacher read from a newer book, listen to similar lectures from teachers, and doing the homework from this newer book while maintaining the same approach to grading is really not that much different.

The reason that I bring this up is because I have encountered some silly discussions. Is this book the best for 100% of the students or is the old book best for 100% of the students? It’s hilarious how intense some of these discussions become.

Why are we talking about which book will benefit the students? Since students are different, the better book will vary depending on the student. Just because you are familiar with one book does not mean that a child that you have never met will learn better from that book.

Regardless, buying newer textbooks adds cost to taxpayers without much if any benefit. It might sound nice that we want to teach children with the most up-to-date resources, but most 50-year old books are as up-to-date as most book that will be published next year. I think that there are better ways to spend our money.