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You know those 10 pound paperweights
that your teachers expect you to carry around with you all the time?
This may surprise some of you youngsters but... Fun Fact: They're
actually books that have information written in them.
Bear in mind, these books are archaic
examples of information transmission that should largely be regarded
as symbols to keep your teachers happy. The tradition of school
providing large books of information while the students ignore them
is expected to continue indefinitely.
In case you're one of the few students
that actually thinks they're absolutely vital. Here are the 6 reason
your textbook is virtually useless.
*This is for the vast majority of
courses. When there is an exception, you'll know it.
1. Your Teacher Probably Didn't Read It
The number of teachers that actually go
through textbooks for their classes thoroughly is dismally low. This
is particularly true for high school professors. The majority of high
school teachers have very few options in selecting the textbook there
class will require. That gives teachers very little reason to dig
through each for the best possible textbook.
Some high schools even have budget
concerns that force them to use textbooks that aren't even related to
the information they're required to teach students. The standards are
updated every year. The textbooks are virtually never.
College professors have a little more
freedom in textbook selection but they're only human. They can't
spend six months of full-time work exploring every page of 3 or 4
different textbooks. Even if they're disciplined enough to make a
good effort, they have to balance their time with their need for a
textbook.
In college and high school, the course
rarely is designed to the textbook anyway...
2. The Textbook Is Not The Course
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Textbook authors cannot create a
textbook that's appropriate for an individual teacher's needs. The
goal of a textbook author is to create something that sells to a wide
variety of courses. Unless your teacher wrote the textbook, there is
no reason to believe the textbook and course have much correlation
with each other.
Teachers, having not read the majority
of the textbook, have to make a number of tough decisions when
designing the course work. A teacher doesn't want to lead a student
too far from the textbook but they also don't want to leave a major
holes in the student's knowledge. That means they're going to have to
veer off the course of the textbook in just about every situation. In
my experience, most teachers prefer to go miles away from the
textbook than to leave their students without something important...
In fact, many teachers design their
course without considering the textbook the slightest bit. It's a
side note at best. That means you could spend two years memorizing
every word of the textbook and still struggle to pass the teacher's
course.
A textbook has a lot of valuable
information but that is part of the problem...
3. It's Too Much Information
When textbooks are being written, as
mentioned before, they're being targeted for as many courses as
possible. That means they need to include stuff that will make every
teacher at least a little happy. Unfortunately for the students, that
means the textbooks are loaded with irrelevant information. It gets
even worse though. Since it's all true information, there is no
logical way to distinguish the information you need to memorize from
the stuff you can ignore.
There is no practical way for a person
to memorize all the information in the average textbook today without
wasting hours and hours of time. The truth is, most of the time a
student spends reading it is useless. (Have you ever spent 20 minutes
reading to only gain 1 or 2 test answers? It's completely
inefficient.)
Textbooks are not designed with the
students in mind (No. Don't believe those silly letters at the
beginning...)
4. It's Designed To Engage Teachers Not Students
Textbook publishers publish textbooks
that make teachers happy. They send out copies of their textbook for
judgment by teachers. The textbooks that get printed in large
quantities are the ones that the teachers approve of. The sad part
about this is that teachers already know the subject. They can't
properly judge how effectively a textbook introduces it (only how
accurately.)
Most of the teacher targeting problems
come from the good intentions of the writers. Many subjects are
unbelievably deep. The people writing textbooks on a subject can go
right into the depths of a subject. Teachers are usually also capable
of this. A textbook writer can't get away with “almost” true
statements that simplify a subject because they're trying to sell
these textbooks as accurate to teachers.
If I were writing a textbook on making
a sandwich, I couldn't get away with saying “spread the mayo on the
bread.” Teachers can object that the statement isn't quite true in
a number of cases. Instead I'd have to write, “spread the
mayonnaise on the two interior sides of the bread slices before
placing both slices mayo side up.” The complexity of the
information is increased significantly.
5. Effectiveness AND Politics Decided The Textbook
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Textbooks aren't always decided with
the best of intentions. Many final textbook decisions have very
little to do with quality content. By the time the option gets to the
teacher, the teacher is forced to select the lesser of multiple
textbook evils.
Publishers have gotten caught red
handed using a number of underhanded textbooks to get their books
into classrooms. They've even gone as far as bribing teachers.
Textbook publishing is one of the most profitable businesses in the
world and schools pay them a whole lot of money. While most of the
business is reasonably fair, some of it is downright disgusting.
6. It's Not The Perfect Source
Oh your teachers will probably hate me
for this one. Textbooks are usually not extraordinarily accurate.
Sometimes textbooks become downright jokes in their field. The goal
of textbook publishers and authors is to be accurate enough. The
information you find from a textbook, is not much (if any) more
likely to be true than any other source.
In fact, experts comparing Wikipedia
articles to Encyclopedia articles noticed similar levels of accuracy.
(No, it's still not an acceptable source. No ones name is at stake
for it being wrong. Use Wikipedia's citations if anything.) This is
common with most information sources. There is no perfect place to
get your information. Textbooks may have them all in one nice place
but it's not necessarily a more accurate source.
Now, you won't be able to get away with
ignoring your textbook in every class but don't feel so bad when you
can get away with it. Oftentimes, teachers only pick a textbook
because they're expected to do it. It's much better to focus your
studies on the information your teacher provides you with. Don't
expect the textbook to teach you what you need to do to pass the
test. That's where most students get led astray.
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than ever before? Follow this blog using one of the methods in the
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