The troubles with textbooks--superficial, overcrammed, out-dated, and hard to read--are precisely the reason why I distrust school textbooks. Perhaps I should clarify that statement: I don't mind textbooks themselves as encyclopedias, pillars from which a teacher can support their lesson. Textbooks, especially history textbooks, work wonderfully as quick references from which you can glean certain amounts of information. I have very fond memories of "Bailey", my APUSH textbook, because my APUSH teacher never allowed it to teach for her--it was a resource, as much as the Powerpoint slides or the primary documents. It was something to be checked regularly, but it never dictated the classroom environment. It's when textbooks (and especially history textbooks) become the focus of a class that I begin to deeply distrust them. Too many times I've seen perfectly good history classes gone to waste because the professor would rather let the text teach us. It's a lazy cop-out to say "read this chapter and answer the questions at the end" and then go over the text the next day.
It also deprives students of being involved in their learning. During my FNED volunteering, I was assigned to a sixth grade classroom. They were studying the classic world--Ancient Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, all the fun stuff. Great! I thought. This is really interesting stuff! They're gonna learn a lot, and I'm here to help them!
The teacher himself was great, and the lessons he designed distanced the students from depending on the textbook to learn (it was also a matter of necessity, as this class had to share about thirty textbooks between four classes). He tried to go as hands-on with them as he could, getting them involved in their learning--i.e., dividing the classroom into different groups and given certain groups privileges to show how the Indian caste system worked. The kids loved stuff like this, and one of my favorite memories from FNED was the day teacher was absent. He'd assigned reading from the textbook, and once the kids were finished they started getting rowdy. While the substitute teacher handled one group, I took aside the rest and asked them about what they read. Collectively they shrugged.
"Whaaaat?" I spluttered. "It's the Roman Empire! It's so interesting!"
"It's boring." One kid moaned. He was twelve seconds away from shoving the textbook off his desk and mentally clocking out. We still had ten minutes of class, and I knew I had to salvage the reputation of Ancient Rome somehow.
"Oh yeah?" I scoffed. "What about the emperor who made his horse a senator? He waged a war on the sea and declared himself a god, y'know!"
Bingo. I had their attention, and spent the rest of the remaining time (about ten minutes or so), eagerly outlining the crazy exploits of the first five Roman Emperors. The students were enthralled. They were eager to learn. They asked questions. They wanted to know more. It was one of the best moments in my fledgling teacher career thus far, because I got the history away from the textbook and made it come to life. (Gaius Caligula: the fastest way to prove to anyone that ancient history is amazing and ridiculous and amazingly ridiculous).
The point of this rather long diatribe is to prove that Smokey and Daniels are right: textbooks alone cannot a student make. They need more. They crave more. If you can grab their attention at the start, a lot of the slogging and fighting you'd have to do is out of the way. They'll go out of their way to find the information that interests them. And textbooks? Just not that interesting.
I think, as a history teacher, I have more available options for a classroom library than anyone else. There's just so many options out there--magazines, newspaper clippings, biographies, historical fiction, primary documents, whole websites devoted to history! One of my absolute favorites is Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant, where she mixes humor, history, and comics (she does literature too!). Keeping a classroom library well-stocked and well-rounded will ease the dullness of the textbook, and help make history more palpable.
(Oh those crazy Romans)
Yay for "Hark! A Vagrant"! One of my favorites. I feel much the same way as you: textbooks can be valuable, but should not be our primary sources as teachers. There's just too much good, interesting stuff out there to ignore if you stick to only using textbooks. I appreciate you giving us the wonderful example of the webcomic as a source of information; it gives a concrete idea of what we can be doing to help teach students. I am curious, though; at some point, students are going to get bored. Caligula is evidently an interesting and hilarious part of Roman history, but at some point the students are going to get bored. Do you have any ideas for how this can be remedied, or at least made less painful for all peoples involved?
ReplyDelete