Dibs

Even if books are absent from fifty percent of American homes, kids still read books in school … right? Wrong, now that California is instituting a new bookless mode of teaching history and social studies, “in what could be the first large-scale step to eliminate books from classrooms,” according to a terrifying story in Reuters: “Pearson, the world’s biggest publisher of educational materials, disclosed on Monday … that about half the state’s elementary school students will learn about the American Revolutionary War and Thomas Jefferson using an interactive computer program. The company also said its success in California, where about 1.5 million students aged 5-11 will use the program in classrooms this year, has led it to plan the same approach in additional states and with more subjects. ‘Digital development costs us less and takes less time,’ Pearson Chief Executive Marjorie Scardino said. ‘We’re speeding up how we’re rolling out those kinds of programs.’ Greeeeat! Keep those illiteracy-promoting programs rolling! (Or is it “roling”? “Roaling”?) UK-based Pearson estimates that the bookless curriculum costs about half as much to develop as a textbook with supplemental materials. “It’s a major breakthrough,” said Chief Financial Officer Robin Freestone. “We managed to launch something for schools that didn’t need a book.” The company’s strategy is “to cull existing materials into a digital offering that included online homework assignments. It sent state officials a laptop computer instead of a pile of books in April 2005, and won state approval in November. ‘Most schools have a big fat textbook on the table that doesn’t really entice students any more,’ Scardino said.” The bookless “multimedia product … enables teachers to tailor lessons to individual students, includes video clips and is able to read aloud all of the lessons in English and Spanish.”