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> How much have algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, physics, chemistry, history, geography, philosophy, etc. changed over the years for all but the most
by ceol 15y ago
> How much have algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, physics, chemistry, history, geography, philosophy, etc. changed over the years for all but the most advanced levels of study? Not much, if at all. You could easily argue that, by now, a subject such as Trigonometry --where nothing new has happened for quite some time-- ought to result in free or near-free books. Nothing new needs to be written.
Textbooks are more than just reference manuals. They're meant to teach. Teaching practices have most certainly advanced over the years.
I agree the price of new textbooks is ridiculous considering most editions change very little year-to-year, but please don't say "Nothing new needs to be written." It's not so much what is written— it's how it's written.
- sopooneo 15y agoTeaching practices certainly change regularly, but whether they advance is not clear to me.
- freshfruit 15y agoI'm no fan of "big publishing," but they do a/b test learning objects... This is a labor intensive job. That is why a new textbook edition costs historically 1M to produce(200k for a re-release).
- greedo 15y agoThen explain why my daughter's 2nd mathbook teaches subtraction SIX different ways. Yep, lots of A/B testing there, lets just try every possible, confusing metaphor so the kid doesn't master anything.
- dsr_ 15y agoProbably because those are the six methods that cover 99+% of the kids. Picking the one best method, which may only cover 30%, isn't enough. Or did you think everyone learns best the same way?
- lazerwalker 15y agoDo you think that 99+% of the kids learn best by reading a textbook?
- homosaur 15y agoAbsolutely not, but you have to make that textbook as relevant as possible to the widest population if you're going to require its usage.
- greedo 15y agoTime is money, even in the classroom. If you spend time teaching x four different ways til Sunday, the kids have no time to master any singular technique.
- cubicle67 15y agoThe bigger question is why does teaching subtraction require a textbook at all? Surely if I asked anyone here to think of six ways to teach a child subtraction, none of the ideas would involve a textbook (or a worksheet).
- sopooneo 15y agoI think they might. You might combine an activity with placing and removing physical things, then showing on paper how the symbols represent this, then having the child try some problems on their own. You could do all the written parts yourself, or you might use a text that had it done for you already. And then the student might practice in a workbook. Wouldn't that make sense? I feel like bad textbooks have given the idea of text books a bad name. And I don't think this is a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. It's more an issue of mostly horrible Scotsman written to align with ridiculous state standards.
- wtallis 15y agoIt's simply a fact that most textbooks now being published were unnecessary. The textbook publishing industry exists primarily to shuffle existing material to produce new editions on an almost annual basis (to destroy the used book market), and to produce custom editions organized according to the whims of state education boards. The need for new material in something like a math book is truly rare. In the past twenty years, we've developed new instructional technologies, but a textbook really shouldn't be tied to a specific brand of calculator or programming language. I'm currently teaching precalculus using a 1994 edition. It's got some exercises to be done using a computer, and has some sample code in BASIC, but they're easily adapted to modern tools. I'm also making use of a textbook published in 1967, because it does a better job at explaining certain topics. Sure, the word problems have prices in cents instead of dollars, but that doesn't make it any less effective. I'm using those old books because they are the best books I have available. I have newer books available, but they eschew clarity for colorfulness and newer "teaching practices" that only get in the way of actually teaching.
- greedo 15y agoI'm not sure that teaching practices have "advanced" so much as they've changed. Everyone likes the shiny and new, even when there's precious little pedagogy to back up the changes.
- sitkack 15y agoIn my appeal-to-status-quo, Has no-one learned before?, big-textbook over inflates their importance.