No more textbooks?

On June 8, 2009, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his latest idea to save money for his money-crunched state: do away with textbooks.  “Textbooks are outdated, in my opinion. For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach the kids exactly the same way. Our kids get their information from the internet, downloaded onto their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their cell phones … Basically, kids are feeling as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons.”

OK, maybe I should’ve seen that one coming.  He’s right, of course, about the comfort level of “kids” with electronic devices.  And he’s right about students having to “lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?” Remember the stack of books you had to carry when you were in school?  Not only is a digital device lighter than a textbook, what about the timeliness of the content?  Most current science textbooks still list Pluto as a planet.  Digital content can be updated constantly.

Even though I work with libraries, historical and genealogical societies to get their historical content digitized so it is: a) totally indexed; b) totally text-searchable; and c) available to more people, I still balk at reading a book on an electronic device, such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Digital Book.  I still like the tactile feel of the book in my hand, turning the pages, leaving my bookmark when I’m done reading for the day.

Kind of like reading a newspaper.  I like that ability to visually scan a page (that I am holding in my hands) so I can quickly see which article I want to read.  And yet, I do get a lot of my daily news intake from Google News.  If there’s something I want to keep my eye on, I set up an “Alert”, which then scans for online articles that contain the content I set up in my alert, and voila! I get an email.  I can’t do that with my newspaper.

I gotta tell you a quick story about how great it is to search digitized newspapers.  I searched newspaperarchive.com by just my name - no date, no city, just my name.  I found an article about my band winning a local talent contest, and that we were headed to the state competition.  Because of that article and the triggered memory, I re-connected with two of the members that I haven’t seen in 30 years.  The article was dated October 16, 1967!

Governor Schwarzenneger estimates the state will save $400 million by going with digital textbooks.  What about the environmental impact of not having to print all those textbooks?  Like I said, I guess I should’ve seen this coming.  This is just one more way to make “content” king, to save money, to literally lighten the load our schoolchildren must carry.  There are pros and cons to any solution.  This is one solution I think merits more attention.

I’ll leave you with one last thought: If “pro” is the opposite of “con”, what is the opposite of progress?