right or wrong answers welcome.
Because public schools are so underfunded they're forced to use decades old editions of books thus leading to kids in the 2020's learning about 
this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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I wish public schools still used old, outdated books.
Now they just hand out these fucking stupid-ass Chromebooks, and ask students to read PDFs on itty-bitty teeny-tiny screens, and take quizzes on Schoology or whatever the fuck app of the month they’re using now.
They dole out the PDFs only as the “lessons” (PowerPoint slides) progress, so students can’t read ahead at all. That blows, because reading ahead is the best way to learn and prepare for lessons.
The only “books” they receive anymore are workbooks. The math workbooks don’t have many great explanations or examples (usually just one per chapter, because “the teacher covers it in class”). Which, if you’re the parent of a child who is struggling with math and needs help outside of class, you will struggle, too, because the Common Core math methods are way different than the math algorithms you learned in school. And they’re graded on method and shown work, not simply the answers. So, off to Google or Chat you go so you can help your kid, because the “book” is zero help at all, and you weren’t there in class with them, were you?
So you try to buy a copy of the teachers’ edition math book for their class, only to learn that the publisher refuses to sell them in orders fewer than 20 units (at $60 per). For fucks’ sake.
Legit, physical hardcover books - books that have words that explain everything found in the lessons - are far, far, far fucking better than the enshitttified tech mess they’re neck-deep into now, even old outdated ones.
And don’t get me started on how they track assignments. There are three separate stupid Chromebook apps the different teachers use to track assignments. It’s a fucking mess. What about writing assignments on the board/whiteboard and having students write that shit down!? It it’s in one of three apps, and haphazardly at that, it’s out of sight, out of mind for students.
I’ve been in IT for decades, and I sincerely, deeply want our public schools to throw all this tech bullshit away, and return to books, pencils, and notebooks.
The only computers ever needed in schools should be if high schoolers are learning Python in an elective programming class or something.
I really really wish computers were considered an optional tool and not The Thing That Replaces Everything. The kitchen I work got a new POS system and now there are fucking TOUCH SCREENS IN THE KITCHEN. So working expo I now have a screen in my face all day that shows EVERY order on one screen thar auto rearranged and I can't drag and drop the orders so I can have them left to right in the order the food is coming. So I'm hunting for shit on this screen all the time. The order flashes fucking black and yellow until you single click it so if we get a bunch of stuff it's like a swarm of bees is attacking my right eye until I take the time to touch each and every ticket on screen. Also we are cooks and we are cooking. A touch screen isn't practical for those with food on their hands and isn't sanitary for us all to be touching and then continuing to make food. It also auto fires any takeout 20 minutes before it's due regardless of how big the order or how many takeout orders there are for that time. So we don't get to plan anything now or work even somewhat efficiently. Trying to clean up is a nightmare cause now you never know when you'll just get slammed. The paper chits were fine and worked great.
When I was in school, I had to read ahead in the book because the answers to the questions in the previous chapter were actually in the next chapter. It wouldn't surprise me if this is still the case, and now students are screwed with a crappy, incomplete pdf that has out of place questions.
Reading the text book so you know the answers isn't cheating, it's learning
I never said it was cheating. But I remember in a textbook, I believe history, there was no mention of anything related to the question problem in the chapter. It was actually answered in the next chapter, so I think it was an error made by the author/publisher.
I was just saying it wouldn't surprise me if schools scanned textbooks or provided ebook versions and provided chapters piecemeal, and then students would be screwed because they wouldn't be able read ahead to find out the out of place question was answered in the next chapter.
Even if it was an entirely different book provided, my experience in online college is that you have to work with absolute slop. It wouldn't surprise me if the same errors that were minimal in old textbooks were more frequent in the rat's nest of online courses and their app abominations where the content created by slave wage staff is rushed and half-assed.
I could see that. Flipping around textbooks was kinda fun too. You'd get to wonder what stuff you'd actually touch on. I don't think screens belong in almost any classroom at all until at least high school and then only AP classes. Computer classes and stuff that actually needs one are exceptions too of course.
I graduated in 2010 and the school I went to had just gotten a rack of laptops that a teacher could sign out for classes that no one used. Our overworked social studies/French teacher who taught noth classes for 2 different grades, so he was a 4 class having guy tried out something. He gave us the entire semester of questions to answer, like 50 pages and signed out the laptops, let us use the library at a whim and just gave us the semester to do it at our own pace. He was in the room grading papers and you could just go up to the desk and ask him stuff. I loved it, it's social studies so it was a general topic that I'd read about in my own time for fun anyway, was just starting to read theory and like being left to do my own research with a guy who knows his shit available to discuss it with. I'd be blasting through stuff using pdfs (Wikipedia citations with a correct answer were worth half a point) and ctrl F, if a topic seemed interesting I'd go chat with the guy, dude LOVED social studies, geography, cultures, economics, the whole thing and so do I so we'd have some pretty fun chats and the whole thing was a breeze that I finished in a couple months and then played emulators for the rest of the time. Other kids could not resist the wider internet and sucked at it. Other kids my age were on newgrounds when they used the internet at home, by 2nd grade I'd figured out there were Japanese digimon fansites that I could copy and paste into babelfish and be a year ahead of everyone else story-wise. Web 1.0 had sooooo much reading material and I ate that up. Worked fantastic for me because I was interested and engaged in the subject, was on very friendly terms with the teacher (who intimidated everyone else cause he was intimidating and also trying to crack our dumb asses into intellectual shape cause he cared a lot. One time the PA box fell off the wall and just barely missed him, so he phoned down to the office and calmly said 'I think there's something wrong with the pa box in my classroom.....It fell.....I was up front speaking....yes it was a very close call. I felt the air from it as it fell behind my back pushing me forward. Like my fury.' And then hung up. Our end of the year assignment was to write an essay on the fundamental nature of competition and my pen doth flew for that one. He said he had been doing this year end essay for 15 years and he found mine absolutely profound and it changed his views, no bullshit I essayed a high school teacher of mine into Marxism). Back from my digressing, the internet isn't what it was then and that kind of system would have been suffocating to the point of torment for me and I don't think it would help the kids who when given laptops and a semester of questions will spend 4 months playing flash games and then copy and paste from Wikipedia. Those kids got failed cause they then cited the page they copied and pasted from but didn't quote the copy and paste. Just wrote thar they read the Wikipedia article. Real learning is done in books. Full stop.
Shit, that sounds awful, I had no idea. But I graduated college in 09 so I guess I was the last batch to have actual books to read.
Dude, you’re lucky to have gone to school in “the before times.” This crap really kicked into high gear 5 or 6 years ago.
And don’t get me started on smartphones in school. Kids these days really don’t have a chance to learn undistracted and un-overwhelmed, or have a hint of privacy (to be dumb kids without things getting on the internet), or respite at home from their peers and their weird drama (the group chats are always blowin’ up).
And then there are the Resource Officers (how many school shootings have they stopped, again?!), whose sole mission it seems is to convert normal childhood and teenage shenanigans into legal issues. Did you carve your name into the bleachers during study hall? That’s not a detention, that’s misdemeanor destruction of public property, so off to a juvenile detention judge you go. Have a small Swiss army knife in your pocket at 17 years old? That’s not a day’s in-school suspension for breaking a rule, that’s possession of a deadly weapon, so off to jail you go. Maybe you’ll be tried as an adult.
The future is here, and it fucking sucks. I’m so glad I came of age in the ’90s, before we all went fucking nuts. I feel bad for these kids and the world they’re growing up in, so I try to help ’em have a sensible, fun upbringing as best I can.
Anyhow, it’ll get worse. Now that the Fascists are taking control, they’ve cut off federal funding to our state’s already-underfunded public schools. That’ll hit hard next year. And I never did love Common Core, sure, but now our (deep red) state is eliminating all adherence to federal guidelines for curriculum (however imperfect), and now redirecting funds to a voucher system toward private (and costly) wingnut religious schools, where objective facts about biology and history don’t have to be taught at all. Cool.
100% agree I still have all my physical textbooks from the first time I went to college because they are handy resources sometimes but when I went back to school like ten years later all the books were digital and I don't have a single one of those anymore (except my two giant tomes on Linux and bash scripting, funny that that was the class where we were assigned a physical book).
I'd give you gold if that were a thing on Lemmy so have this instead 🥇
Children secrete a sticky sugary substance out of their fingertips. The book condom is there to absorb the nastiness when the child opens the book.
This. They're basically heavy-duty dust jackets
To make the poor kids feel even more outcast. Us poors had brown paper bags and everyone else got cool custom wraps.
(Obviously it's to protect the books, but IMO schools should have provided covers for everyone)
When I was teaching in 2018, our psych textbooks were from 2005. To answer your question, it's to protect the books so they last longer
It was a conspiracy by the paper bag and colored pencil manufacturers to get tax write offs and increase profits.
Ah yes, whomst among sus doesn't remember the cool S on your history book?
Oh you better believe there were stussy S's next to flames and skulls and maybe some fine art of Bugs Bunny and Daffy in street wear.
Go to page 6, go to page 234, go to page 87, go to page 350, go to page 18, go to page 97. On page 97: your gay
AKA Big Bag
to make them ✨pretty✨
If the books are issued by the school it makes sense because those things aren't getting updated very frequently so they have to be protected.
So on the last day of school, you can take them off, put them on your shoes, and slide across the hall.
to drive me crazy. that material felt awful; pulling at my skin like silk sheets
weirdly the only schools I went to that made us do this were private schools (before anyone jumps on me for being bougie, it was catholic school, one of the cheapest type of private school), when I switched to public schools they just let us let the books go to shit
With a cover you can bring a geornography book to school.
Merica.
Any non-USAians actually have these?
Canada, never seen these
In France we put on transparent ones on books so they're protected. Idk if buger kids have to pay for books, but ours are lent for the year and passed to the next generation so it's important to keep them in a good state as long as possible
Not in the UK
In China we put plastic ones on our books to protect them
Yep and the teach would check for it, get mad and make you stand in the corridor outside the class. They don't do this to the current generation though. It was sort of a public (government) school thing.
I had the spandex ones, but paper bag ones always worked better. My textbooks were often big enough that the spandex ones just made them hard to carry, and you could always draw on the paper bag ones.
We'd have to pay for the books if they were visibly damaged, and replacements were often $100 or more (in the mid to late '00s), and even though I grew up in one of the "best" public schools in the US, my parents still couldn't afford to replace them.
I don't understand this for note books that lasted a semester. Maybe looked prettier?
never did that until i moved to a small town around high school age.. they had us cover our books on the first day of all my classes and i had no idea wtf they were talking about or how to do it.. everyone else did it 2nd nature because apparently they'd been doing it for all the years they'd been in school..
it was supposed to 'protect' the book cover from damage i guess
i think part of it was customisation, since you and most other kids would likely have the same books from the booklist so it would be easier to tell each one apart when you're in class
also i think another part is that school books are going in and out of bags a lot, and the exposed thin (in the case of softcover) or thick (in the case of hardcover) cardboard was liable to get damaged/frayed/bent, and so giving the cover a bit more structure cos of the plastic doesn't seem like a bad idea
I will admit, i'm thinking less like the specific covers in the pic and more the like wraps and stuff that come in rolls but i think it applies to both