Curriculum & Unit Design

Can Textbooks Save Our Worst Teachers?

In one of his TED Talks, Seth Godin mocks textbooks:

The textbook! Now if you want to teach somebody how to become passionate about…American history, why would you give them this (as he waves the textbook in the air)? Do people walk into Barnes & Noble and say, “I’m really interested in that latest, gripping thing that’s gonna get me all engaged about the Civil War. Do you have one of those textbooks in stock?”

I love the practical way in which Godin addresses an overreliance (or reliance) on the textbook, a problem that is often viewed as one of the main obstacles to educators moving forward with their practice.

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Use Those Old Textbooks!

By Ross Cooper 9 Comments

Next month I will have the pleasure of working on curriculum mapping with Heidi Hayes Jacobs for two days in New York City!

The Problem

With this opportunity in mind, I decided to rewatch her TED Talk from a few years ago. One of her lines caught my attention:

“Every textbook, in every school, that’s in paper, is dated.”

So, I ask myself, in general…Are we (educators) being a bit melodramatic when we talk about the struggle of having to instruct with outdated textbooks?