Arnie’s death knell for textbooks in Californian schools has had a number of responses. Pearson’s shares fell noticeably for example, and John Dunford was on the Today programme defending the humble textbook as a key tool, especially for slow learners. I suppose I ought to feel peeved because I’m a textbook author, but I never think of myself as one because my books are designed for independent students, not teacher use and I guess that for me defines them as something other than a textbook. I’m actually quite impressed with Arnie’s idea. The Swedish Kunskapsskolan group abandoned textbooks some years ago and have everything their pupils need to learn to follow their curriculum, online. It’s pretty dull reading, but then so are most textbooks.

I used them very sparingly when I was a teacher, preferring to create my own materials, which in my experience is what skilled teachers do. Only the lazy and the weak wade their way through a textbook chapter after chapter. How teachers create their own lesson material in a digital environment was the subject of a research paper I gave at the International Council of Educational Media conference in Cyprus, a couple of years ago. 

What I don’t buy is that Arnie’s move is greener. Undoubtedly he is facing a huge budget issue and the cost of replacing textbooks every year is outrageous, especially when you consider how many could be reused but aren’t because students and schools don’t make enough effort to recycle them. The total cost of moving to online versions of textbooks will be considerable and has to take into account not just their production, but the tools, hardware and software that pupils will need to access them, when and where they want to.

More importantly for me is the anxiety underlying John Dunford’s caution. It is a major and terribly risky assumption to think that just because text is online, children who are still learning how to learn and even fundamentally how to read, are also able to study effectively via a screen.  My question to anyone working in educational technology is what part did screen technology play in the creation of the dismal situation described in this article from the Guardian? I know from my own experience that the author does not overstate the case at all.