By Ben Markley
Textbooks are one of the staples of student routine and expenses, yet the way they are made, sold and used is far from perfect.
Student Jess Ebner said her main pet peeve was paying for an unnecessary textbook.
“I can’t stand when a class requires a textbook but is totally based off lecture,” she said. “To have a book put on the required reading list and not use it just makes me ask why I wasted my money.”
Suzanne Torok-Burge, adjunct professor, said professors have an obligation to incorporate a text.
“If [students] have to pay a lot of money, the instructor ought to use the textbook,” she said.
Student Ben Lauridsen disliked paying for something he could have gotten for free somewhere else.
“Having material that’s accessible online that you paid $100 plus to get in a book is irritating,” he said.
Student Steve Brown was not as concerned about classroom use as he was with the textbook industry itself.
“Publishers force writers to reshuffle the deck to make students buy new books,” he said. “That whole business model stinks.”
Student Sharon Brown, his wife, said the system frustrated not only professors, requiring them to write new lecture notes, but also students trying to save money in a struggling economy.
“My daughter worked at Buyback, and she saw people who couldn’t sell back their books because they had older editions,” she said.
Steve Brown said certain courses simply didn’t require new editions.
“I’ve got texts on classical Latin written back in the 1800’s,” he said. “Well, classical Latin hasn’t changed in 600 years. Some texts need to change, but some just don’t.”
However, Torok-Burge said updating textbooks can help keep the presentation of a subject fresh and relevant for its current generation of readers.
“The basic principles of my particular subject haven’t changed for thirty years or so, but it helps to keep updating so that this generation can understand and relate to it,” she said.
Steve Brown also voiced a common student complaint: high prices.
“The only reasons these books are so expensive is because they’re ‘academic’ books used for education,” he said. “When I can get a thousand-page computer language book for $20, and I have to pay $200 for an inch-thick book because it’s ‘academic’, that’s ridiculous.”
For Steve and Sharon Brown, improvements in textbooks would begin with adopting a new format.
“Based on the current technological environment, I think every student should have a laptop or tablet with PDF texts,” Steve Brown said. “Paper’s too expensive, and the publishing cycle runs faster on PDFs.”
He said the newer format would be more convenient for students as well as the publishing industry.
“Wouldn’t you like to have a tablet instead of a backpack?” he said.
Sharon Brown said the tablets would have more perks than just convenience.
“A tablet or laptop is more environmentally friendly,” she said. “The paper industry is a polluting industry, and when a book gets replaced by a new edition, that’s literally hundreds of worthless pages.”
For Ebner, textbooks should play a real but secondary role in the classroom.
“I always use textbooks as a supplement rather than a primary way of learning,” she said.
Torok-Burge said no professor should hide behind a textbook, good or bad.
“I think textbooks are a great guide for discussion, but in the end, the instructor has to know what they’re doing,” she said.
Contact Ben Markley, sports editor, at bmarkle2@jccc.edu.