Is the textbook destined to go the way of the inkwell?
Textbooks have been part of the education process and informal bodybuilding for decades. They are the academic starch in every student’s diet. They are also a costly burden on students and K-12 schools. And they are a boon to textbook publishers.
The textbook industry has built itself into an unavoidable juggernaut by turning untold numbers of trees into hulking volumes that wind up as educational requirements in schools. It has also adopted an insidious strategy of changing its major sellers just enough to force K-12 schools and college students to buy new editions on a regular basis. Students can wind up paying as much as $1,000 a year or more for their required books. For generations the situation has been like the weather — everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it.
Now finally, due to in large part to shrinking education funding and rising tuition costs, textbooks are getting some much-needed attention from legislators.
On September 27th, California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation to create a website where textbooks can be downloaded for free. A combination of two bills by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) gives students free digital access to 50 core textbooks for lower-division courses offered by the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems.
- SB 1052 provides for the development of digital textbooks and creates the California Open Education Resources Council, made up of faculty members, to develop the list of targeted courses and create and oversee the approval process.
- SB 1053 creates the California Digital Open Source Library to house the digital open source textbooks and related materials.
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Ed. Note:
State governments and educational institutions have been glacially slow to leverage the efficiencies of digital publishing. The technology has been available for years, but the entrenched publishers have been in no hurry to put their cash cow on the barbecue and try new textbook publishing models. The modest effort in California does not mean the battle is over, but the town sheriff has at last got the gumption to challenge the gunslinger to a showdown. It isn’t high noon. It’s sunrise.
The bills exhibit an encouraging glimmer of Literacy 2.0 enlightenment, not only by putting the state into the digital publishing business but also by requiring digital textbooks created by the council to be published under a Creative Commons license. That means colleges and universities in other states will have access to the books. In addition, the books will be encoded in a non-proprietary format, such as XML, so that they can be easily distributed and repurposed.
That government is finally being prodded to address the textbook issue is a good sign, but don’t expect the sheriff to shoot the gunslinger through the heart.
Textbook publishers have been slow to go digital due to a lack of motivation, but they have seen this day coming and will be ready with their own digital offerings. They know they will soon face competition both in distribution and in content. The yet-to-emerge new digital textbook publishing models will develop hand-in-hand with new models for online education, which is doing the same thing to schools that California is now doing to publishers. Hopefully that will mean better access, lower costs and more varied content.
The showdown may inflict a few wounds, but in the end it will be good for the whole town and everybody in it.
Original photo by Chrystal This article is published with permission from Literacy 2.0.
