Jay Mathews
"Bring back textbooks"Washington Post
March 15, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/bring_back_textbooks/2011/03/15/ABr153Z_blog.html?wprss=rss_education
Topic: Textbooks and their use
We have heard a lot about how useless textbooks are and not much about their usefulness. Here is an article which makes the case for textbooks.
Key Points: Textbooks may be bland and written to support a certain point of view however, the point of this article is that students benefit from working through this unique type of text.
Relevance: Textbooks are one tool of the educational trade. How and when they should be used is something that is important to consider.
I just finished the readings for Ed Pysch for when we get back and it was interesting. One talked about how Math textbooks are different in Japan and the students there get to keep their textbooks! Then there was another article that talked about the futility in trying to teach "everything" - textbooks do that. They cram in a bunch of stuff and keep it all pretty superficial.
ReplyDeleteOn a personal note I borrowed Anita's Ed Psych textbook because I wanted to get some background knowledge - in quick bite-sized form. Textbooks are good at that. The additional readings we get from RP offer the deeper stuff. I can see benefits of both.
Like you said they are a tool. Not the whole shebang.