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Are Textbooks Obsolete?

2019-02-12 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook

Prompted by the Gates annual letter's claim that textbooks are becoming obsolete, John notes that textbook prices have soared while free tools like Mathigon, 3Blue1Brown and Khan Academy make them less important, and argues textbooks resist supply and demand because students and teachers rarely choose them; his own late success with geometry leaves him optimistic.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Textbook prices and spending; textbooks less important now; free tools: Mathigon, 3Blue1Brown, Khan Academy

  • ★★★ John says average textbook prices have risen more than eightfold since he was born, far faster than inflation, housing prices or even medical care. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John says Americans spent over ten billion dollars last year (2018) on textbooks, significantly more than on all fiction, every Harry Potter, Gatsby and Goodnight Moon included. — 00:00:00 · Harry Potter (book series)
  • ★★★ John says that while textbooks are far more expensive than they used to be, they are less important: when he was a kid they were basically the only way to learn geometry, but now there are lots of options. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John recommends Mathigon, an extraordinarily intuitive series of online courses with interactive elements to help you understand and confirm what you're learning. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John recommends 3Blue1Brown videos, which help visualize complicated mathematical concepts. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Free tools vs textbooks; the Gates annual letter says textbooks are becoming obsolete; Melinda on older, working college students

  • ★★ John recommends Khan Academy's series on geometry. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John says these free tools are often less comprehensive than textbooks but more interactive and adaptable to different students, and cost nothing instead of $10 billion a year, much of it paid by underfunded public schools. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says Bill and Melinda Gates's annual letter this year (2019) covers surprises from sexist data to slow toilet innovation, and says textbooks are becoming obsolete. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John recommends reading the entire Gates letter if you're interested, with a link in the doobly-doo. — 00:01:27 · doobly-doo
  • ★★ Melinda French Gates (quoted): John reports Melinda Gates: almost half of college students are over 25 and more than half have a job, and they often lack time or resources to navigate an inefficient, inflexible learning environment. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — Materials as a barrier; district- and state-level buying; edtech should complement, not replace, teachers

  • ★★ John, no expert, says he hears from many students that the price of educational materials is one barrier to post-secondary education and the way those materials work is another. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says he often hears of a huge divide for middle and high school students between how students learn and how teachers want to teach and the materials they must use. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says most textbook buying decisions are made at the district or state level, not by students, teachers or even school administrators. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John grants that this standardization exists to make sure teachers use comprehensive, reliable resources to teach kids what they need to know. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John thinks people in edtech have spent way too much time trying to replace teachers, which won't work: nothing can replace teachers' vital person-to-person work. — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Are textbooks obsolete? Maybe, but they are impervious to supply and demand because consumers lack choice

  • ★★ Bill Gates (quoted): John cites Bill Gates in the letter: educational materials should complement what teachers do, not replace it. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ Asked whether textbooks are becoming obsolete, John answers maybe. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John worries textbooks, like other ever-pricier things, are somewhat impervious to supply and demand: students and teachers have little choice, which limits innovation and makes them artificially expensive. — 00:02:55

00:03:24 — John's C- in geometry and learning it at 41 through Mathigon; optimism; sign-off

  • ★ John says he has no idea how this will turn out and is terrible at predicting the future. (unsure) — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ John says he got a C- in 10th grade geometry and was embarrassed about math; at 41 he worked through Mathigon's geometry courses with a real math teacher's help and finally understood tessellations. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ John says understanding tessellations makes him optimistic in spite of it all. — 00:03:53 · optimism

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: textbook

Also: People: Bill Gates · Melinda French Gates

Works: 3Blue1Brown · Gates Foundation annual letter · Goodnight Moon · Harry Potter (book series) · The Great Gatsby

Organizations: Khan Academy · Mathigon

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: educational technology · higher education · inflation · mathematics · open educational resources · optimism · supply and demand

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