Posted on 02/01/2005 12:02:04 PM PST by Ol' Sox
I've often watched my 13 and 14 year old sons hoist their bookbags onto their shoulders and head off to school. Didn't think much of it until this morning when I saw my youngest almost fall over backwards when he saddled up. I stopped him and took the bookbag off his shoulders and was surprised by the heft of it. Told him to wait there, and weighed the bag on the scale. 34 pounds.
Now my son is a small and wiry guy, metabolism like a hummingbird, and weighs 82 pounds soaking wet. The bag had his textbooks, notebooks, lunch, a project and some other odds and ends. It amounted to over 40% of his body weight.
Now, we aren't the kind of family to complain about this, and in certain respects, I think that carrying heavy things is good for you. But 40% of body weight is too much, which brings me to my topic.
Why aren't my kid's books on CD?
Light, durable, replacable. The answer, I believe, is that textbook manufacturers get a really high turnover because a $50 book might last 3-4 years. Another is that not every student has a computer at home, and we wouldn't want to leave anyone behind now, would we?
I would love input from my fellow FReepers on how the textbook manufacturing industry might be convinced to change how they do things and incorporate CD distribution into their business models.
There are interesting things underway in this area. Textbook publishers have long had an INCESTUOUS relationship with the educational powers that be....and the 99th edition of a college algebra text is no better than the first--except for the bookstore and publisher's bottom lines by obsoleting and hindering re-use by those who would 'save trees' and recycle/share. The books for the K-12 are mostly bought by departments...and are subject to any district/NEA unwritten criteria re: homosexuality, Gaia worship, omission of any POSITIVE Judeo-Christian historical facts...except where school board memberss are all over this like...hmmm, Hawks on Rats. Texas just helped protect the definition of "Marriage" by one board members' watchful eye....
Profs and teachers are routinely authoring books and profiting off them in addition to their salaries, commonly requiring their own books as for the taking of required courses....one wonders how much one must toe the NEA line to win a lucrative publishing contract?
CDs and Distance Learning and computers at home and PDAs with interactive lessons...oh, My! If they really did that WHOLEHEARTEDLY--they wouldn't have to have all the buses and campus facilities for factory indoctrination...but they don't WANT that...WE SHOULD.
SchoolForge.net is Open Source and one thought towards breaking the publishing stranglehold. I have a number of others but will not post them publicly here at this time.
From their site: Schoolforge's mission is to unify independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open resources for primary and secondary education. Schoolforge is intended to empower member organizations to make open educational resources more effective, efficient, and ubiquitous by enhancing communication, sharing resources, and increasing the transparency of development. Schoolforge members advocate the use of open source and free software, open texts and lessons, and open curricula for the advancement of education and the betterment of humankind.
http://www.schoolforge.net/
I'm not trying to sound cold here, but what about the ones who can? In 2001, according to the US Census, over half of the 105 million homes owned at least one computer. I would bet that number has gone up significantly over the last four years, and that most of the homes that have no computers also have no children.
The main problem is Digital Rights Management (piracy). The second problem is the lack of a convenient and non-prohibitive platform to use the text books in digital form.
I'm in favor of the eBook devices, though I'm quite non-plussed by the way that the current manufacturers have gone about pricing, selling, and marketing them.
Often eBook makers and content providers tend to team up leaving the consumer with little or no options.
An open standard for digital publications with a secure digital rights management system, coupled with a flexible and easy to use reading device would reduce the text book load from 3-5 text books to a single device weighing less than a pound. Integration of said device with a school network and teachers will be able to load homework directly into the machines, and then download the homework from the machines.
With the proliferation of school sponsored laptop programs, the eBook device shouldn't be too many years behind. All that remains is for a company to come along and convince publishers that their solution will guarantee their profits, and accessibility to current and new markets.
You're lucky, they usually change editions every semester now, so you can't purchase the used ones. They switch the chapters around, as to make it very difficult to use older editions.
Thanks, Blurblogger. That is the kind of info that I'm looking for.
Your idea would work for college, where most schools now require students to own a computers and books can cost $500 or more per semester. But I agree with the other posters, children whose parents could not afford a up to date computer would be at a disadvantage.
If textbooks are as expensive as I remember -- especially a whole year's worth -- a computer is entirely within everyone's means.
Apparently some hope that "nanny" will provide all.
Could be, I don't know.
Do high school kids have to buy their books?
Somebody's paying for them, right?
Okay, I'm with you now. (I'm sick, so that's my excuse.)
If they have the book for class, and the CD-Rom available for take-home use, it would help.
I would love input from my fellow FReepers on how the textbook manufacturing industry might be convinced to change how they do things and incorporate CD distribution into their business models."
Take it to the next level, for get the CDs instead of 5 or more $50.00 text books printed on dead trees get a PalmOne Zire 31 Handheld and go totally digital. You can have the authors bypass all of the middlemen and download the books (at school) Directly for a fraction of the cost and the author ends up making more! Plus the Palm can loaded with TEST software and the students can take the test directly ob their Palms (or whatever PDA is chosen) and Beam it (via built in infrared beamer) to the teachers machine thus saving time, effort, loads of money, and lots of trees.
But it won't happen because mucho wasted tax dollars and many layers of Bureaucracy would be eliminated and as we all know we can't have "that" in any government program.
Ding Ding Ding... Stop the voting, we have a winner folks!
Texts like the Bible and the McGuffey Readers were used predominantly a century ago when a vastly higher percent of Americans were literate and self-supporting and crime rates were lower.
The Readers were filled with Biblical themes. The Bible had compound sentences and many passages could be taught at various levels. But factory education and groupthink and the anti-God agenda preclude their advocating--or even allowing these--because the Word of God is Light unto Darkness and the campuses are deliberately 'dark' for the enslavement of not only the mind, but the soul.
Textbooks are a major scam. I teach in a college, and will post details tonight.
I posted a couple of comments upthread, looking forward to your post on this.
Okay, here is another question. I would like to invite a representative from Pearson Education, "The World's Largest Publisher of Educational Materials for PreK - 12th Grade", to participate on this thread. Is there such a thing as a "guest" id on Free Republic?
Too easy to duplicate. The cost of textbooks is obscene. I don't think a publisher is going to sacrifice that kind of profit to put it on a medium that can be reproduced for twenty-five cents on a home PC.
Ol' Sox replied:
Now I was thinking that as well. But profits, literally, on the backs of kids demonstrates negligent thinking in their business model, IMHO. OSHA would have a fit if they had jurisdiction. But, litigation aside, why can't I just get a copy of the textbook on cd? Maybe as an adjunct to purchasing the textbook? Criminy, they're cheap enough...
The Publishers are not the creators of the intellectual property that is to be taught to kids. It should be people dedicated to teaching kids, experts in a given field, educators. On top of the notion of kids struggling under obscene weights there is the fact that taxpayers and parents are struggling under obscene costs for continuously replacing these books.
And then we come to THESE BOOKS.
How many of you have leafed through the crap that is being pushed on kids in school as "authoritative knowledge" in the "approved textbooks?" I think it's time for a revolution.
I suggest that we find experts in the various teaching fields who are more interested in teaching than in getting rich at the public trough. We should get them to create a text book on their topic of expertise and buy it from them for a reasonable fee. With the resources we have on the NET I bet we can come up with as much money as the big publishing houses for the actual authors who are truly worth a damn. We then turn around and license the text book as an electronic document to school systems for a reasonable fee, not designed to make obscene profits. Terms are simple, the school can provide the text book in a secure electronic format (secured PDF? MS Reader? Other?) or they can print it out, or have it printed out for the students at their school. We serialize the copies so that we know who is trying to screw us by distributing the stuff freely, but we don't gouge them, so it shouldn't be an issue.
More importantly than the cost savings potential in such a business model, or even the weight savings for our kids, think of wresting control of public school text books from the mono-culture of the Clinton friendly publishing monopolies?
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