Luddite--Two D's One T

I watch my students. They usually come to class without much beyond their cell phones and a blank stare. Some will have a folder or notebook, but they don't often take any notes. Few will have their textbook with them and there really isn't much reason to bring it. In high school hallways things tend to be different. There they trudge around with backpacks that look as though they could easily be dropped off in a primitive area for a two week survival exercise.

I don't like our college mandated textbooks very much. I am sympathetic with the plight of students who find it a financial burden to shell out $140 for an American Government textbook. It is extortion, pure and simple. The money subsidizes the supplementals that faculty receive for use of the text. The additional volumes of test question banks, PowerPoint presentations, teacher lesson plan suggestions, web-page links, video DVDs, etc. get paid for through the high cost of the basic book. Most of the supplements wind up buried on bookshelves or lower right hand desk drawers in a faculty office.

The student is stuck with the book at the end of the year because textbook authors don't want books resold to the next season's students. They "update" their book so the earlier version is superceded by a fourteenth edition which changes "happy" to "glad" in four locations but is otherwise essentially the same.

All of this makes me predict that an ebook appliance like the large-format Kindle DX will eventually replace conventional textbooks. How much easier it will be to carry the one handy gadget rather than a backpack full of textbooks. How economical to download the season's books at a lower cost without killing a billion trees for paper to print them. How efficient to be able to do a software update rather than a new printing when a book is revised. I don't see a downside to the technology.

This woman whose profession is listed as "stay-at-home-mom" apparently has an opinion that the Dallas Morning Canary Cage Liner values enough that she writes an op-ed piece on the topic:

Why e-Texts are Bad

She admits that the school-aged generation is tech familiar and comfortable with all things "e" but she bewails the loss of contact with something "tangible" rather than virtual. I'm not sure how she feels about the tangible good rotting away at the bottom of the backpack unused. A book in one's hands feels good, but a Kindle with 1500 books on tap seems a whole bunch more practical to me for everyday convenience.

She worries that the ebook will be vulnerable to "hackers" apparently having never heard of the concept of a read-only file. Hacking to get your bank account numbers or debit card PIN is a worthwhile endeavor. Hacking to contort your child's textbooks seems a time waster. My experience is that the liberal leaning of textbook writers is already all the hacking we ever need to worry about.

She doesn't think there is an expense advantage. Apparently the one time expenditure of an ebook reader followed by several years of drastically reduced textbook costs for every school year escapes her. She probably also hasn't noticed the number of schools in very successful districts that issue or underwrite low cost purchase of netbooks or laptop computers.

I think she illustrates clearly what a Luddite is and may be also highlighting why newspapers across this nation are contracting, losing money, and becoming largely irrelevant. They apparently don't get the applications of the new technology.