Take a look at students waiting for school buses. Have you noticed how they stand? That they are tilted? With twenty pounds in their backpacks they strain against the load, putting the weight on the balls of their feet.
The average weight of the five most popular Physics texts is 3.64 pounds. History and Geography texts run about the same so a normal load of books, a laptop and snacks runs around 20 pounds. Add a trombone and a tennis racket and its a full load. A tennis racket will always be a tennis racket but why is it that high school textbooks have to be so heavy?
First, they have to be durable. Bindings and covers must be bullet-proof and suffer only minimal damage if dropped from the windows of school buses. With prices running $65 and up, the initially equipping students in a 1,000 student high school with books can run $300,000 or more with hefty costs for replacements expected every year thereafter.
Texts have grown big largely because of the attractiveness of colorful graphics and side-bars. It is common to have as much space devoted to pictures and graphs as text, which helps lead to todays 700 page heavyweights. Durable paper quality, protective coatings and accompanying CDs all add their bit. With some texts approaching 5 pounds, texts have grown as big as they can get. Something has to change.
Aside from weight and cost, a more serious problem afflicts textbooks. As of today, schools have only four major textbook publishers to choose from. If all four adhere to the same political slant, which they do, then generations of American students are at risk of growing up biased.
Add the influence of the National Association of State Textbook Administrators, or NASTA. NASTA members make up the textbook committees of twenty states and dictate which books every school in their states will use. So NASTA has enough collective clout to force publishers to offer exactly what they specify. And it is their choices that comprise the list from which Marysvilles schools must choose.
Then, in this age of real-time information, there is the issue of stale content in textbooks. Textbook publishers contract with noted historians or physicists or mathematicians to write books. These worthy experts draw on what they learned (in the past), spend a few years organizing it into textbook form, and send it off for editing and formatting. Next, a great ad campaign is spread far and wide to tout the newest and greatest book in the field. And then it is marketed for enough years to recover cost and generate a tidy profit. The problem is, the authors perceptions can be 10 or 15 years old before a student reads them.
Okay then, what to do? There are a number of options available. The weight issue might be addressed by holding one set of texts in classrooms so that students dont break their backs hauling them from home to school and back each day. Books break down from being packed around, not from being read. The extra cost is cut by reduction in wear and tear. Additionally, every student would have a book to study at home and no one has reason to complain, I forgot my book, when at school.
Or schools could switch to durable paperbound texts just like the ones the entire rest of the civilized world uses. Lighter and cheaper, they may not last as long, but are tough enough to hold up through a few cycles of students. The use of soft-bound texts is often coupled with a damage deposit to encourage careful use. Longmans highly respected paperbound texts have been a mainstay throughout the British Isles and colonies at costs ranging between $14.00 and $28.00.
Excellent instruction can be found on the web in the form of e-texts. Longman Publishing, mentioned above, offers web/text programs under the banner, Singaporemath.com. Webmath.com is another bona fide math tutorial offering help with math issues for all grade levels.
These departures from traditional textbooks couldnt come at a better time. As big high schools are being split into small, specialized communities, each offers a narrower menu of courses than mega-schools. That change has bred a fear that, come registration time, students may be stuck with limited choice. Many possibly wont be able to study a special language or take a course in Asian History.
What would have been a problem one generation ago is no longer a concern. The solution comes in the form of distance learning or web-based instruction. Generally thought to have first surfaced about 1980, web-based courses have had twenty-seven years to evolve into polished and user-friendly instruction. Universities, state educational agencies and even the Steilacoom School District now offer top-notch courses that consistently allow home-schooled children to test above grade level. Services like Steilacooms WASHVA cover the basics while WSU, Indiana University, the University of Iowa and others continually improve a full spectrum of upper-level and advanced placement courses.
Will any of this help to cut the load in book-bags? We certainly hope so, but the bigger question is, how effectively will it help to improve education?

Comments may be addressed to: rgraef@verizon.net.