I understand that it is financially impossible to just replace every textbook with something new, but having decade old textbooks stunts our ability to learn. Especially those of us participating in Advanced Placement classes. Imagine the exam covering something fairly recent like the economic recession, but unfortunately you couldn't study it in the textbook because you were absent and the lecture notes you took weren't sufficient enough to make you understand. What do you do at that point? Guess and hope you pass? Not the best idea.
While I don't want to become reliant on technology, I would like to get a decent education regardless of what I had to do to get it. The only problem about online textbooks is not everyone has a device to use during school to read the textbook. At my old high school, King Drew Medical Magnet, every students was issued a Google Chrome book for the entire duration of their stay at King Drew. This could be a solution to the textbook issue, but then again buying enough Chromebooks for the school, and then some for emergencies and incoming students, would likely be more expensive than buying new textbooks.
So what do we do? How do we get up to date textbooks without having the entire school go into debt? I'm not sure if this is true, but supposedly our school district has money stored away that they aren't giving us access to (despite the fact that we need it). We could email our district board leaders telling them how problematic the whole situation is and how much it affects us. If enough of us email, they'll have to at least consider it, right? We could also fund-raise. I'm not talking walk around the school and sell pretzel rods to all of your friends. Clubs could pitch in a little more and sell after school to parents picking their children up. We could have a car wash in the school parking lot for teachers, students, faculty, parents, and anyone willing to support. There are endless fundraising possibilities, but it will take all of us to put in the effort, not just 5 students who have nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon. Once a Monsoon, Always a Monsoon!
~ Makayla Mosley
While I don't want to become reliant on technology, I would like to get a decent education regardless of what I had to do to get it. The only problem about online textbooks is not everyone has a device to use during school to read the textbook. At my old high school, King Drew Medical Magnet, every students was issued a Google Chrome book for the entire duration of their stay at King Drew. This could be a solution to the textbook issue, but then again buying enough Chromebooks for the school, and then some for emergencies and incoming students, would likely be more expensive than buying new textbooks.
So what do we do? How do we get up to date textbooks without having the entire school go into debt? I'm not sure if this is true, but supposedly our school district has money stored away that they aren't giving us access to (despite the fact that we need it). We could email our district board leaders telling them how problematic the whole situation is and how much it affects us. If enough of us email, they'll have to at least consider it, right? We could also fund-raise. I'm not talking walk around the school and sell pretzel rods to all of your friends. Clubs could pitch in a little more and sell after school to parents picking their children up. We could have a car wash in the school parking lot for teachers, students, faculty, parents, and anyone willing to support. There are endless fundraising possibilities, but it will take all of us to put in the effort, not just 5 students who have nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon. Once a Monsoon, Always a Monsoon!
~ Makayla Mosley
I like your idea of fundraising for new upedated because it gives the students a way of working for their education. This shows the district that the students are willing to work for updated education. This will further influence them to put their funds into the education system because they would see our efforts to reach a higher level of education.
ReplyDeleteOther than updated textbooks, I agree with you on how we shouldn’t be reliant on technology. We can't be reliant on technology because not everybody has access to it and sometimes technology fails. Textbooks do not have problems with them except that they are bulky. If we update our textbooks every five years then it wouldn’t be as expensive to update because the funds over those years would be there. I believe that it would be best to stick with textbooks even though they aren’t as updated and convenient as technology because they will eventually be updated so we the students may learn more.
-Jared Pacion
I feel like, in a way, many students have already become reliant on technology, and we should just complete the shift into the digital age of learning. We already use chrome books and have special school emails, and when doing a report, I myself am much more inclined to type the subject into google than to walk over, grab an oversized book off the shelf, and search mindlessly for a topic that may or may not be in it. This might be just attributed to my laziness, but I do not feel alone in my reluctance. Textbooks are expensive, and as you have stated, they expire. It would be much easier to have an online version that can be updated as new events happen. It would also save paper, as textbooks are filled with 600-1000 pages of knowledge that will just eventually expire, then prompting somebody to print a whole new one and wasting a tree.
DeleteAs for the student fundraising aspect, a whole new addition of textbooks is most likely too expensive to be raised by an after school car wash or bake sale. Let’s face it, most of the students that attend our school do not and will not be excited by the idea of new textbooks. Textbooks are becoming irrelevant, and one way or another, they will be replaced by technology, the only actual argument is whether we can speed up the process or not and replace them now.
- Samantha Boyd