*Eek! Gasp!* No more textbooks!

How taboo would it be if one day every textbook disappeared from the classroom?  Can a classroom function without a textbook?  Better yet, without textbooks is there a way for students to absorb information more efficiently?  We are moving into an era where information becomes obsolete at the drop of hat.  How can textbooks keep up with this evolution?  For instance, I know for a fact that the science books given to students today include Pluto as our ninth planet.  However on August 24, 2006 this science fact became obsolete.  The icy planet Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet and all of a sudden we had eight planets in our solar system.  Not only do we now have eight planets but scientist were forced to come up with a more concise definition for a planet.  This is a lot of information.  A lot of significant scientific information.  Are our students learning this information today from our school textbooks?  Only if the textbook has been rewritten and updated in the last four years.  What does that cost and how efficient can it be to rewrite textbooks with every scientific update?  Which also brings up another issue in this day and age - How 'green' can textbooks be?  Or what kind of waste does an out-of-date textbook create?  However if the science class is equipped with the Internet and the teacher is tech savvy, then the students could quite possibly have this information at their fingertips.  Being outdated in subjects such as Science is not what we want for our students or our children.  Furthermore technologies such as iPads can download electronic books or ebooks making updating information much simpler and efficient time wise, as well as, waste wise. 

What about worksheets?  Can children learn from worksheets?  From my experience the child sits in a chair all day copying what the teacher tells them to write in each blank.  It seems rather mindless and absorption has to be minimal at this point.  As a substitute teacher, I have been forced to teach a second grade class purely from worksheets.  It was by far the worst several days of teaching I have ever endured.  Not only was I ready to bang my head on a wall but the class was uncontrollable.  By day two, I had begun to change the class a little bit to suit my kind of teaching which included games and floor time with plenty of visual aids to satisfy little tactile hands.  Of course, I could only do this during break times and in between worksheets since I have no power as a substitute.  On day three, the classroom became much easier to control because the children were excited to be there.  Later I found out, due to the worksheet workload, that class was six weeks behind the other second grade classes in the county.  The teacher's response when told she needed to catch her children up, "But how will we be able to do that many worksheets?"  Time management in the class was obviously an issue.  What would that class had been like if it were technologically based?  If the students had visual aids they could touch, as well as, Internet access that brought them colorful animations to guide them in their math work, audio clips to accompany their spelling work, and video clips to keep them updated on the latest scientific explorations - would the students be more captivated?   Grabbing the attention of a second grader guarantees more absorption of the material presented to them, as well as, an exciting learning environment. 

There is one factor to consider - how feasible is it to supply every child with computer access or an iPad?  The initial cost can be rather scary.  Obviously privileged children live wired lives.  According to the website Critical Issue: Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement, 21 million youth between the ages of 12 and 17 are using the Internet and 78% of these kids are using the Internet in school.  This is truly a fantastic number but what about the underprivileged children?  How do we keep them from being excluded?  While such a large number is using the Internet at school, there are 3 million underprivileged children who are not?  How do we provide them with the technology they need to keep themselves moving in this high tech era? According to the above website, underprivileged children who are given Internet access at school can improve their "economic prospects" by giving them "marketable skills".  I believe that this is a remarkable find.  In fact, this should become a goal worth obtaining.   However the ever burdening financial situation of the school system is a challenge that is harder to overcome than simply saying "All schools should have access."  I believe this challenge is worth the effort to keep American children competitive with the world.

This brings up another issue - is America 'keeping up' with the rest of the world?  Once again, according to the above website, Critical Issue: Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement, U.S. children performed poorly on the international assessments.  Furthermore leaders such as Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and former Secretary of State Colin Powell have stated, "that today's students are not prepared to compete internationally."  What I found even more interesting in this article and what brings me to my point is that "Education and business leaders have also begun to question whether current assessments focus too much on measuring students' ability to recall discrete facts at the cost of not adequately measuring students' ability to think critically and solve problems".  Hmmmm... are we discovering that regurgitated fact from a textbook does not develop problem solving skills?  I have believed for some time that as we evolve as human beings, so should are teaching skills.  It is no longer relevant today to stand in front of a classroom scribbling facts on a chalkboard and testing from textbooks that may have information that is completely outdated while children sit at attention in hard-backed seats.  Each child learns differently. While some may be able to learn from a chalkboard others may need to observe the lesson being taught or even touch and smell it.  While good reference materials should be provided, visual aids are a must.  I once taught a fourth grade class about the composition of soil purely from the cartoon images in the textbook.  How can a student fully grasp the difference between sand, clay, and peat if they are not allowed to touch it?  What may have also helped in that particular lesson was Internet access.  A video on different soils would have brought the students from a dull cartoon version of soil to a more interactive lesson.  I believe that there is enough evidence to support that through the use of visual aids and interactive lessons provided by the Internet and iPads we can throw dated, wasteful textbooks out of the class and bring the individual student into the 21st century.