Are digital textbooks a good idea?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced plans to phase out school textbooks in favor of digital learning aids to help the state save money.  The measure called the Digital Textbook Initiative calls traditional math and science textbooks outdated and moves to a switch to the new format.

“Kids, as you all know, today are very familiar with listening to their music digitally and online and to watch TV online, to watch movies online, to be on Twitter and participate in that and on Facebook.  So this is why I think it is so important that we move on from the textbooks,” the Republican Governor told schoolchildren in Sacramento on Monday according to remarks released by his office.

“The textbooks are outdated, as far as I’m concerned, and there’s no reason why our schools should have our students lug around these antiquated and heavy and expensive textbooks.  California is the home of Silicon Valley. We are the world leader in technology and innovation, so we can do better than that,” Schwarzenegger said.

California is the first state in the United States to introduce such an initiative.  The move comes as Schwarzenegger looks to slash spending across a range of sectors in a bid to narrow California’s projected 24 billion dollar budget deficit.  The average price of a school textbook is around 100 dollars.  Schwarzenegger said initial savings from the plan would be between 300-400 million dollars. If the plan was widened to cover more subjects, hundreds of millions more would be trimmed from the annual budget, he said.

“I know this is, of course, a dramatic shift from the status quo and there is some resistance in some cases,” Schwarzenegger said. “But I feel that this is the wrong time now to hold onto the status quo, because this is one of the worst economic and financial crises that the state has been in since the Great Depression.  The state has a tremendous lack of money; therefore we had to make severe cuts to schools, billions of dollars of cuts, so we have to find every possible way to think outside the box.”

All this digital stuff sounds great at first glance, but let’s look at the big picture.  How are we going to build character if kids don’t have to carry all those heavy books around?  Not to mention weight training, do we want all our kids to be 98 pound weaklings because all they have to carry is some digital book? 

Besides that how are we going to know which are the really smart kids who study a lot if everybody just has one digital book with everything on it?  Think of the teachers too; when Joey goes to sleep in English class do you think the teacher is going to be able to wake him up by dropping that digital book on the floor next to him? (At least not without knocking a few micro chips loose.) 

How are you going to put a sticky note on a page in your digital text book so you can read it again?  How about doodling in the margins of a digital book? (Some really great art could be lost forever.)  How are you going to hide a comic book inside a digital book so you can read it when the teacher gets really boring? 

What are you going to use to press the leaves you collect for botany class if there are no heavy books?  How about practicing you posture and walking with a book on your head, try that with digital.  What about kids that say their homework is done so they can watch TV and then later they use the old book under the covers with a flashlight trick?  (The glare on that digital screen is going to give them a killer headache.)

I could go on and on but you get the picture.  Maybe we better give this digital book thing a little thought before we set fire to all the real books.    

Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, digital books

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