[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.

[sharkhawk]

I agree totally. Why would the current attorney general of Texas be in a HISTORY book?

[Marie]

Good idea. My children's grammar text is about 100 years old. The date on our communications book is from the 1960's. Science needs to be updated every 5 years, though. History books could be used for 20 years, if an update was thrown in every two years.

[pepperdog]

"Maybe they should write text books with longer life spans..."

Amen! It is ridiculous to have to buy new textbooks each year, if they would get back to basics they would find that the basics haven't changed all that much. Furthermore it isn't necessary for the books to be completely rewritten for each new "historical" happening.

The textbook game is nothing but a cash cow for the writers (more teachers) the editors and the publishers. Am I the only one who remembers teachers actually teaching and using the blackboard to write the lessons? Students were expected to copy the lessons and do the work, I daresay part of the learning process was copying the lessons.

[A. Pole]

Maybe they should write text books with longer life spans instead of being topical to the minute like Newsweek.

Excellent point!

[Dataman]

Maybe they should write text books with longer life spans instead of being topical to the minute like Newsweek.

It's called planned obsolescence. It keeps taxpayer funded book expenses unnecessarily high... though unnecessarily high expenditures is a central characteristic of public schools.