Posted on 08/08/2009 9:56:45 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Budget cuts will force the California Board of Education to delay buying new textbooks until January 2016 at the earliest, officials say.
A state budget that closed a $24 billion deficit last month dramatically reduced state spending for kindergarten through eighth-grade textbooks, and a result most school districts are also putting off buying new high school textbooks, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
California has also moved to allow funds that were supposed to be solely for textbooks to be diverted to other uses -- an amount that totals $334 million this year. The Times said administrators contend that flexibility is essential for dealing effectively with the budget crisis, but at least one state official disagrees.
"We need modern, state-of-the-art textbooks, not outdated, antiquated textbooks," Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell told the newspaper. "It could be close to a generation before we see new textbooks."
"There is no really good decision," added California Teachers Association President David Sanchez.
Is it really gonna take THAT long to re-write the history book???
Indeed. If you go to Barnes and Noble and buy a book to use, you are not going to pay more than $30 for it, new. And probably you can get that book on e-bay or Amazon for $5-$10 dollars.
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Seriously, as long as every kid has a text book that is legible and not falling apart, there really is not a problem here.
Math changes in 9 years? Shakespeare in 24?
My teaching career spans from 1968-2000. I have a nice collection of literature, English and history and geography textbooks from 1912 to 2000. Through the decades the books for the equivalent grades and subjects expanded in size, and shrank in content. A modern day 8th. grade text is bloated with full color photographs, biographies of obscure, but politically correct progressive heroes, and time-wasting, mind-dulling group-think activities.
I especially enjoy showing first time guests to our home a history book published in 1938 by Macmillian entitled "America, Yesterday and Today".
I keep it on the coffee table in the living room. It is approximately 9"X6"X2" with a metallic gold cover with purple lettering. Whenever I ask what grade level the book is the answer is either high school or college.
This text book was designed for 7th grade, but could be used for remediation with 8th graders. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States, and the then 21 amendments is included in the reference section at the back of the book.
Just the opposite. There is plenty of funding for the teacher's unions. They can continue their work without the distraction of books
What is taught is a dumbed down version of every course. I went to private school 1-9, and then public school 10-12. I learned more in private school in grade 9 than public school grade 12. Indoctrination to the progressive movement is all that abounds in public school.
I taught high school math from 1957 to 1972. When my own kids got to high school, I looked at their textbooks with some amazement. They were uniformly inferior to the ones I had taught from twenty years before.
So they can rewrite history for 8 long years and then come out with the revised Obama era texts to explain economics, the Constitution, American history, the science of global warming and when life REALLY begins (age 4).
Ya...but how many new state pensioners...?
The NEA is as socialist, leftist loony liberal as it gets without actually saying “communist.”
The Higher grades and universities are largely outright communist now.
The basis of most of our dumbed down society is the leftist teachers and you want to leave it to them??? The ones with this very agenda??
Please do not distort my position.
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Actually, considering the quality of textbooks continues to decline at an alarming rate, this actually might not be a bad thing.
I’m inclined to agree with George Bernard Shaw on this issue. He once said that no person ever learned anything from a school book.
That’s right... Education is a luxury.
/sarc
How much learning actually takes place in a brick and mortar school? I would say, “Very little!”
I have posted previously that **all** academically successful children are homeschooled! This is true even for children who are institutionalized for their schooling. Nearly everything a child learns is at home, through the efforts of his parents or his **own** home-study habits.
I buy Curriculum that costs 360.00 a year.
It is non-consumable so it works for both kids.
Who needs books?
http://www.aophomeschooling.com/switched-on-schoolhouse/
>Please do not distort my position.
What part of the above was distorted by my reply that it cannot be left to the public schools & the teachers therein?
Since I posted the part when I made my previous response, you know darn tooten what part it was. The part you did not post in your 'above'.
I don’t think that is such a bad thing...
We can rewrite them between now and then...
Put the facts back in ...
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