Textbook mania

There are a lot of things I want to write about regarding my student teaching experience-- reflections, thoughts, stuff I'm learning, etc. Not necessarily on here, but somewhere I need to get it down. There's a list of things to be recorded, but right now I'd like to discuss textbooks, and I think this blog is the right place to do it.

When I was in elementary school (public school in a well-funded district, way back in the late seventies, early eighties) we had textbooks, but they were owned by the school and only lent to the students each year. I don't remember when we started with textbooks in earnest-- there were always reading books and math books, but I'm fuzzy on the other subjects. I do remember that in fifth grade we had a big unit on the weather, and for that we copied notes from the board-- maybe the same for the digestive system unit in fourth grade?

We had Art once a week, and for that we went to the Art Room and did all sorts of art projects using paint, paper-maiche, oak tag, etc. For music we went to the Music room and learned songs from the history and folklore of the US, as well as some basic musical notation, used different kinds of instruments, and other more popular and recent songs. Periodically we had Assemblies in the Auditorium with performances of different types to watch (one I remember was "Germs", a play about hygiene).

At the school I'm in now, and probably in many others, the kids stay in their classrooms for Art and Music, and the teachers come to them. So certainly the types of activities that are feasible are more limited (no paper maiche, for one thing.) But there is another limiting factor in classes of all subjects. The textbook.

Although Spain supposedly uses a Constructivist approach to education (as evidenced in their laws and statutes), and we have been learning about these methods and precepts in the university where I am getting my teaching degree, in practice it seems that textbook learning is the norm. (This is not to say that use of textbooks incompatible with Constructivism-- of course that's not true-- but at the elementary level, such dependence on textbooks is not necessarily to the students' advantage.)

It's not to the parents' advantage, either, because here even in the public schools, kids have to buy all of their textbooks and only in some circumstances is it possible to use books from another year, say a brother or sister's old ones. Yes, there are subsidies for families who meet the income requirements, but many--or most?-- families aren't elegible. I have ranted about the textbook industry before, but it is a firmly-entrenched institution, (i.e. big business) with millions of schoolchildren needing to buy new books every single year.

What are these textbooks like? First of all, each subject usually has at least two different books-- one of them is a workbook, and the other one has other types of activitites. The workbooks are often, well, worksheets. So far I have seen two music classes with my first grade class, and they have done color-cut-and-paste activities about sounds that are high and low (in this case, animal sounds) and a "color the pictures and number them 1, 2, or 3 to show the order they come in during the song." The song in question had played in the background on both days while they colored, and they also sang along (words are of course in their "class book") and seemed to enjoy that, but still. Personally, color-cut-and-paste isn't my idea of a particularly interesting or useful way to teach music. True, I have only seen two classes and flipped through the books, but I look fondly back on the music classes of my youth when we did things quite differently.

Art class also has two books, and I have seen four art classes so far. They have only used one of the books, which features paper models to assemble and stuff to color (like a mask for Carnival, and a pirate hat.) Frankly, each hour of wandering around watching kids coloring and assembling premade paper models has been boring me to tears. The other art book had some interesting projects in it-- instead of coloring they pasted in lentils to fill in the middle of a sunflower, or pencil shavings and toothpicks for a forest scene-- I can't remember what else. But it seems to me shame that the kids just buy the books at the beginning of the year and dutifully work their way through them, leaving little room for other types of projects that don't fit in a book.

I guess my beef is that first graders don't really need to have books for everything, do they? Where's the spontaneity, the adapting to the students' interests or teacher's talents or to other factors outside of a textbook? Art and music, especially. I realize it's easier for the teachers, who have several different grade levels to teach, and don't have their own rooms full of materials and space. Still, it seems (to me) a shame.

And of course once the parents have spent the money on the books, they want to see them get used. So, there is a pressure to "get through the book."

As for other subjects, I can see the benefits of using a textbook. For Science and Social Studies, I don't think it's necessary in the early grades, and it does limit what gets presented and how. However, a textbook also provides a certain guarantee, since it is carefully planned and researched as far as content, presentation, layout, exercises. And it is a way to reinforce reading and writing skills in a methodical way, as well as higher-level skills such as getting information from a written text. It also ensures that all the classes who use the book are getting very similar input.

My school is using a globalized method, which means that they have one Class Book (actually they get a new one each trimester) with language arts, math, and science content grouped into multidisciplinary units. I like this approach quite a bit. They also have separate math and language arts workbooks for more practice, and a reading book.

But still, I'm not entirely on the textbook bandwagon here. What are your thoughts? Anyone?

(I will say that I recognize the apparent irony in the fact that not long ago I was lamenting--sort of-- the lack of textbook use at the university level, but actually I think that is an entirely different situation.)