The sixth educational myth The textbook and exercise book

The sixth myth:              Textbooks are great, for they not only contain everything students need to know, but also a sensible forward planning in the subject.

6                   Textbooks are something that is yesterday already when it comes new printed and can never cover all for a subject. They don´t give space for individuals to look for facts and opinions in a more developed way. They cost a lot and are often unnecessary. Free alternatives are almost always available. 

The exercise books rarely use training methods used in our modern communication society. Mostly they include forms for the work with unmodern forms of reporting. Better Textbooks can sometimes give you a planning for the teacher ruled part of the education. But the pupils, with searching for knowledge guided by their interest, they have nothing to offer.

The teacher type The Copy copies before start of every new year in the school his planning, after changing the dates in it.

He is the last defender of education ruled by the teacher and the textbook. He has rarely read any of the last twenty of the educational plans for the country. Why should he? He found the perfect method for education already at the teacher training school and has saved a lot of time by keeping the planning. He loves teacher training, which give him extra time for his big hobby knitting.

We will visit The Copy’s classroom and also a colleague of him.

The Copy was trained in the method Plato and the disciples (myth 1). He knows that you must present every part of the work in an interesting and captivating way and is himself thereby taken so totally, that the introduction never ends before brake.

As a teacher of religions, he knows, that when God created the world he was especially thinking of the teachers, and did later give them the textbook. In the textbook, you find everything that he has to know and he is happy to be the great Guru for his disciples, who all look to him as the great leader and the keeper of all knowledge. This of course is the mission of his life.

He always starts the lessons by mild and quite exchange glances with his designated prefects and they know they really are in a good position of getting the highest grades.

He is very keen with details. Pencils, textbooks and notes are right angled ordered on his desk. The same order he instructs his disciples to use.

If you listen carefully, nothing will be lost for you!

Slowly his sets on with todays’ homework oral test. Always mild looking at his disciple, who sweating is trying to remember last text. Any mistakes he only helps by citing the textbook perfect out of memory.

This followed by a fast review of the next text to be remembered to the next lesson and then fast over to the effective exercise book.

To let the disciples and his parents get a feeling, that they are working with an extensive text and knowledge material, is the exercise book so organised, that the disciples only have to fill in a single word that´s missing in the written texts.

The disciples are supposed to read the text and find out the missing word. This although is not necessary. All you have to do is to carefully and secretly look up the number in the answer at the back of the exercise book and then get the word. Sometimes they get problem with this method, as there are some small misprints in the answer.

The Copy is always very understanding to this kind of mistakes. The disciples thereby only show a full trust in the exercise book.

Down the corridor, we find a colleague of The Copy. Also, working with religion. The Copy has very kindly tried to help his younger colleague to get right into the profession, but without any response.

In his classroom, everything is a mess. The pupils are standing by the teachers’ desk and it´s hard to see where the teacher is. They talk of discussions they have had on something they call Skype with people in any different countries and many strange religions. Strange stories about religions and thoughts, that really is nothing for the disciples to care about. And what kind of disgusting rites!

One disciple showed a film with savages living in India. They seem to believe in how many gods whatsoever!

It is distressing to see how the colleague waste valuable time for lessons with just loose talking of people´s religious conceptions. Let the savages have their own mad ideas and concentrate the work on the Religion.

It´s also sad to see how the colleague distorts the heads of the disciples by dragging them around to most amazing places in town. Last time they were at such a suicide bomber building they call a mosque.

The worst to the last, now they are having an evening of discussions, when parents of different families are presenting their relations to their religions. That are private things! Let the work go for the knowledge part instead.

Thank you for the visits! Let´s sum up some about learning and the need of text books.

If my children could have chosen to visit all my own lessons in religions in my schools or to watch all the films about religion In the Swedish Knowledge channel or the stately educational channel, it would have been an easy choice for me and them. But it would have been a bit empty without their class mates. We would have invited them to our TV sofa and the interesting talks we would have had.

The view I get through text books and realistic view I get from good information programs, talking to active participants of different religions, maybe taking part myself in observations of ceremonies and rites and discovering of religions, there never was a note about in the books, are not to be compared. If God created the textbook for the teachers, he has regret it ever since.

This is just an example of all the subjects we work with in the school. The comparison will be the same in every other subject.

Note please, that I don´t give up the book as useless, only the textbooks. These specially for school produced and compressed.

What´s then the reason that textbooks still are produced and ordered and used in all kind of education? Not only unworldly fossils like The Copy use textbooks. It turns up in most classrooms and in most educational context.

In higher education, the books are more ordinary books, not comprehended. But many teachers have an uncritical relation to them and dislike to kill their darlings. When it´s written in a book by a professor, it´s true.

But truth does only exist until it has been shown to be untrue. And that happen all the time. Higher education doesn´t mean higher quality by any mean. From my pedagogical view, moreover the contrary.

I sometimes see 40 students not having a clue of some subject at the university. And they still all pass the exam. I also later read the books of professors, that are based on the same misunderstanding as by the students I observed.

The most important reason for the textbook is that we expect it. When are we getting our books?

In a course there should be a book. Be grateful we left the clay stones with cuneiform behind us! Everything goes from the textbook.

Think of a course in family tree building and research. There is a textbook, ordered by the publisher, the teacher and highly wished by the participants of the courses. It´s parted into ten parts, because they meet ten times in the course.

The writer knows this and maybe he includes a plan for ten times. No problem and the cost here is maybe 25 bucks. Everyone can afford it, Later, you can look up things, if you don´t remember. But mostly it´s just a reminder of that you took place in that course.

The alternative is here, that all participants, before the start of the course, seek information on the internet along some instruction, but also collect all kind of information they find on the subject at all, and bring it to the course start.

The book will be more systematic with information. The author is very competent. But the variation of the information will be much better from the net. Most participants will be more active from the start and the understanding is likely to be better.

In this course, there is no contradiction between the two ways. Take the information from the both ways. Ten years later you don´t have so much need of the textbook. Everything has changed.

Swedish schools, and also Swedish politicians, have seen it as something positive to give the books free to the pupils. I personally speak for no costs at all in any education. Giving the chance to education is always paid back in a more sufficient society.

But when the use of textbooks is replaced by other ways of finding facts and topics, the textbook still gets support by the old idea of free textbooks. Think of the idea of free clay stones with cuneiform! Cute, but useless for education.

Instead “the schools save money” on using old textbooks year after another, until they fall into pieces. Sometimes I have seen old math books in the same classroom, not because the pupils need that, but as result of too few left in the cupboard!

At the same time, there is an almost infinite need of learning material for individual studies in subjects like math, physics, chemistry, biology and so on. The students are always on different levels and need tomorrows learning material.

This production will cost very much and still be cheaper. Because we will produce together in the future, if the governments of the world are awake of the possibilities. Divide the costs all over the world. We have the same educational needs.

We must move out from Plato and the disciples, and realize, that in the future individuals will study on their own or in pairs, maybe guided by schools, but not taught by them. One of the models is the idea of Just in Time education.

Think of plane geometry. In the classroom, all the pupils have worked with a lot laboratory materials like Geo boards and understood and maybe learned some basics about area and units the measure. Now it´s all about that the individuals will take this further. Maybe in a pair if they are on the same level or alone.

We need a material or program, that step by step takes the pupils in the area of plane geometry. Something totally superior to any math book that ever existed. All work is done after short video instructions and is followed by a diagnostic test, telling the pupils what is understood and not, prepared repeating and a new test to come further.

Like an automatic program, but still under control from the user. Working towards a full understanding and full skills. No teacher could match that, even in working with a single person, but here millions of pupils can be taken care of on different levels at the same time. Yes, by working, the pupils will also give results, that direct further development of the program and will make it work even better.

All this 24 hours every day, with no cancelled working periods due to sickness or teacher training. The educational training of tomorrow.

The costs to develop this material will be very high, but still compared to the costs of today, very cheap.

We will replace Plato, who the last thousand years anyhow couldn´t match the need from his disciples.

The part of the work that is to be done collectively in the classroom doesn´t need a textbook or an exercise book. Here we go for the reality and for internet for facts.

The part that is individual understanding, knowledge and skills need the next generation of learning materials. Direct the educational producers and governments and the authors in the direction of this next generation material and put the textbook where it belongs in the museum!

Goa the 12th of February 2017              Lennart Warenius