Despite predictions of their demise, college textbooks aren’t going away

Description

The textbook has been declared dead many times over. Progressive educator John Dewey decried the “text-book fetish” back in the 1890s. Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wished out loud for textbooks to become obsolete. Articles on the demise of textbooks regularly appear with each new school year. They describe these books as only so much content, as an indifferent information dump, as dead tree versions of information that would be better presented interactively, via multiple media.

This article is different. As the author of book titled “The Textbook and the Lecture,” I’ve compiled a list of five reasons why I believe textbooks are here to stay.