Posted on 06/09/2009 10:15:41 AM PDT by yankeedame
uh-oh. California drives the textbook industry. Say good-bye to tons of publishing jobs.
“the average price of a textbook is $75 to $100”
There’s a big problem, right there. Ain’t no free market in textbooks. No, sir.
What if they dont have electricity, how will they read the computer? do away with books, goodness. HMMMMM..
Textbooks nationwide are edited for content to please the textbook review people in Californika. By eliminating those textbooks, Arnold is eliminating the control of editorial slant of those textbooks.
Oh boy. This will soon to lead to — E-Readers and iPods are causing an eyestrain on our children — we need more money to prevent eyestrain!
People will obviously make fun of this, but it does have merit.
A PDF file is cheaper than a book, easier to highlight, and you can cut/paste parts of it.
This is the kind of “out of the box” thinking Dems are always saying they will do to save money (but never do.) Would it be cheaper to provide students physical books, or an electronic reading device with the books installed on it? I don’t know about now, but someone will come up with a system that is cheaper than physical books.
It’s the 21st century for crying out loud, and students are still using the same study tools they did 100 years ago.
>>...the average price of a textbook is $75 to $100, whereas digital media can be distributed cheaply... <<
Neither here nor there, since a textbook doesn’t need to be replaced each year for each student. The ones I used in elementary school - and I grew up in a suburb that is still considered affluent - were used before I got them.
We just found out our local CA grade school will have laptops for all 3 and 4 grade students next year.
This may be replacing the test books, but they won’t be able to take them home.
I can’t imagine this is cheaper than books. Trying to keep 100’s of laptops operting with 8 year olds driving them..that will take manpower.
Truth be told, Texas has just about as much juice in that process as does California. And our nutty right is as wacked-out as their loony left.
The text book industry has been a scam for decades. Coffee table edition sized books for over $100 and 4 years later they slap a new cover on it and rev the edition number so nobody will buy the used book back. Maybe if they charged normal prices and only revved the edition when there were actual substantial changes in the text and those changes were the result of actual substantial changes in the field textbooks wouldn’t be the target of every education budget cutter in the country.
most of those text books today get lost or tossed or ruid
Haha. The textbook publishers will scream bloody murder. Never was there a more lucrative gig.
Ahnold needs to see a display of another digital technology..
Mcguffey reader + photocopier = PROBLEM SOLVED
Yes, the books are overpriced. But that’s not necessarily the publisher’s fault. The books have to be written to standards determined by the state. If not, the publisher won’t be able to sell there. Since each adodption state has different standards, you can imagine how complex that is. Then, consider the fact that the schools buy programs, not just books. More often that not the ancillary products are given away, but they’re still expensive to produce. And without the ancillary products a publisher’s line can’t compete. And regarding revisions, imagine trying to sell a social studies program that’s not up to date.
I’m just saying, the publisher isn’t always to blame.
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