[Cincinatus' Wife]

***Despite pleas from the state Board of Education, the Legislature cut textbook funding by $182 million this year. As the school year begins, some books are 14 years old, and gaffes in accuracy are inevitable. ***

Maybe they should have bought books instead of spending in other areas.

Another school on a "tight" budget:

Board scrubs $1,750 a day school speaker***"It's paid by a federal grant," School Board member Dennis Reid said, dismissing concern over how the money is used.***

[ODDITHER]

You know, if I was a teacher, I would use the outdated books as a learning tool. Just like finding the hidden picture in magazines is used as an advertising tool, so could be the text books.

Of course this would take the teacher reading the book also .... hmmmm what a novel concept.


I will never forget the year that it took all year to get our English literaature books. We were forced to read Shakespeare out loud in class - passing the books back and forth when it was our turn to read. We also were made to learn the meaning of all the prefixes, suffixes, and many root words so that we could find the definitions of many words.

Oh thank God we didn't have text books that year.

[Thebaddog]

Maybe they should write text books with longer life spans instead of being topical to the minute like Newsweek. And I do think that the books are available by the publishers if they tried to look for them.

[samtheman]

Each year the textbooks get more dumbed down and PC'd-up. It's a waste of money to buy new ones.

[raybbr]

Why should I have to buy textbooks for Houston?

[David Isaac]

The author of the article zeroed in on the problem (like a laser beam), kids may be setting their goals towards one too many servings of dairy products per day. But at least she was as perceptive as the administrator and the teacher cited in the article. They also seem clueless as to where the real problems in education lay.

If it we up to me, as a teacher of Social Studies (not quite certified), I would choose a text at least 35 years old, because of the ratio of facts to propaganda and just plain B.S..

[tiamat]

What they need to be doing is teach HISTORY , period. Getting off of the Social Studies crap would help a lot.

My daughter had Early American History last year for fifth grade and the teacher used a textbook from the early 70s. Big thick thing with lots of dense text. Covered all sorts of stuff that would be considered controversial now, like the "Three Fifths Compromise". Actual HISTORY of what happened around the time of the Revolution and not a lot of PC feel-good crap.

The kids spent a couple of weeks decontructing the Constituion and the Bill of Rights and the teacher made SURE that they knew what it all meant.

There are some good teachers out there who mean it.

Tia

[meyer]

I doubt if math, English, and basic science has changed that much in 14 years that they need "updated" books - that is, unless they want the newer PC versions of those subjects. Perhaps in the higher levels of science, you'll find some interesting developments, but the basic stuff for the lower grade levels hasn't changed. Water is still a liquid, ice a solid, and steam a gas. 2+2 still equals 4, and sentances still contain a noun.

[G.Mason]

Correct amount of dairy servings per day?

Aids cures?

I'm surprised they aren't complaining about that old, antiquated document given us by our Founding Fathers, the Constitution.

But then there's no sense in "up-dating" something they don't teach.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

A few months I was talking to a retired HS principal from my old home town.

He pointed out that, when he was there, there were only three principals in the entire school district: himself (HS), the elementary school and middle school principals, and no assistant principals.

Now, there are EIGHT principals. Which, he pointed out, cost the school district nearly a million dollars a year in salary and benefits.

And, at the same time, the district has LOST population.

Of course, when taxpayers voted down the last school budget, what did the school cut? Positions? Of course not: football and band.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

For the entire Clinton Presidency, the outdated books were not a problem. In 2003, now its a disaster. Puhhlease...

[anobjectivist]

It's too bad that my history teacher in college thought the book was the greatest thing (at least that's how he acted). I took the class to be a challenge, because I thought it would be more rigorous than a highschool class.

I was mistaken.

The teacher took notes on the book in powerpoint form and presented them to the class every day. If he ever got to the point that he felt he was being boring or he got bored himself, he would try to use a synonym when reciting verbatim the powerpoint presentation that was behind his head (he was facing the class, clicker in hand, reading off the presentation line by line by looking over his shoulder). He would, inevitably, stumble on that synonym he never could find, and waste time trying to find that perfect little word that existed only in his mind.


That was just last semester. It's a good thing I'm an engineering major, or I would go nuts with all of the crap the liberal arts professors try to pull. 17 hours ( maximum allowed without going to a hand-holding advisor) seems to be on the easy side.

I'm beginning to wonder how much money we'll continue to waste on an education that could be had for $1.50 in overdue fees at the library, as Good Will Hunting put it.

[Ff--150]

Folks, are we missing the point here--OUR CHILDREN NEED TAXES TO BE RAISED, NOW!!!!

[Lil'freeper]

I question just how outdated these books are (other than falling apart at the seams) and suspect it's more an exercise in updating 'spin' and dumbing down content. Literature and history texts don't need changing- unless there are too many white guys cited.

The phenomenon in math and science is to dumb down the content and add more pictures. Compare a chemistry text of 20 years ago with an 'updated' one and you'll be shocked. The topics are treated with less depth and detail today and somehow schools can't 'cover' as many of them in a school year. I know of one district in MD that offers two years of chemistry to deal with the topics that used to be covered in one.

Biology texts may be the exception. That field changes very rapidly and the trend in the texts is toward molecular biology and away from phylogeny. These days, you almost need to take chemistry first in order to better understand the biology texts.

[blackdog]

Old text books can be a nightmare. I taught my kids from their "first, second, third, etc... grade reader" series which were from my grandmother. They were published in 1908. The problem was that the third grade reader contained vocabulary and sentence structure used in college courses. In other words it took a hundred years to dumb a college course down to the third grade level.

As to the number of dairy groups served a day, or the treatments for AIDS, just what the hell does that have to do with education?

If you use text books from the late 1800's and early 1900's, you'll get a college education by the eighth grade.

[EdReform]

Bump & Ping

[Richard Kimball]

Other generic headlines:

Pope condemns violence

Bengals lose by three touchdowns

Pauly Shore's new movie is an insult to intelligence

Dennis Rodman arrested for bizarre behavior

Clinton claims problems are Bush's fault

Hundreds killed in disaster in India

Millions starving in Africa

Unemployment rate has economists concerned

[af_vet_rr]

Maybe they should have bought books instead of spending in other areas.

Agreed, there are too many people working in the school districts making six figures that are not really contributing directly or indirectly to education. It seems like way too many districts have way too much overhead when you reach the admin level.

You know what's really sad? Your liable to have kids who don't pay attention to the world around them read about President Reagan in the outdated books and think he's still the President, or think that the President Bush they are reading about is still the same President Bush today.

I remember doing some volunteer work with one of my daughter's teachers, and she was running the kids through a current events exercise, and the hot topic in the news was the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. She started off with a very simple question : Which nation did the Soviet Union just invade? (keep in mind these were high school kids 10th grade level). The first person to answer said Australia, the second one said "no it's Austria". The teacher just had this look of suprise on her face. I kept thinking "The Australians and Austrians are going to be very surprised to hear about this".

[Jim Noble]

"In the AIDS and HIV chapter, treatments were so limited at the time the book was written there were just three possible treatments. Now there are probably hundreds,"

Or thousands.

Probably.

[quack]

My daughter attends a private school that I pay a whopping
$200 a year for books.Last year,this school had the highest SAT scores in the state.Problem solved.

[luckystarmom]

Well, I think the solution is e-books. Every kid should have an e-book. New material could easily be downloaded every year (or more often).

The initial e-book is expensive, but it would last for a long time. They would hold all the textbooks plus regular age-appropriate books to read.