Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 106 posts

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#41

Post by jimbob45 »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
dehrmann wrote: post #9

I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.

I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about? I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?

Here’s a terrible example.

Old textbooks used to use white names. Now, many schools are required to throw out prospective textbooks that don’t have names representing multiple minorities.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#42

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
detaro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all subjects have the luxury of being so isolated from changes in the real world.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope. Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

I have a bunch of EM textbooks from the 40s and 50s on my bookshelves, the field has changed quite a lot i.e. I understand what they are saying, but the mathematical formalism is very obtuse and the applications are often irrelevant outside of the very basics.

The Feynman lectures were recorded prior to the standard model for example, still excellent but hopelessly out of date as an introduction to undergraduate physics in that particular area.

Also, old textbooks that didn't make it to still being in print today may not be out of date but they may be bad pedagogy. A certain percent of everything is crap, textbooks are no different.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#43

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #29
pgalvin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is laughable to suggest that history does not change. Even studying history at the equivalent of high school had me comparing secondary sources from the 1960s, to the 1990s, to just a couple years prior. History, or rather our interpretation of it, is constantly evolving. I expect it is the same for most of the humanities.

> is constantly evolving Being an amateur historian myself, most of that smacks of political fashion. The (very) shallow view of history taught by K-12 doesn't need to change. The War of 1812 hasn't moved to 1814 yet. Hitler still lost WW2. Edison still invented the first practical lightbulb, despite all the attempts to dethrone him :-)

Studying history formally isn't about memorising stuff you are interested in. I have a lot of sovietology books now, that doesn't make me a sovietologist because I don't consider myself able to really analyze the sources properly.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#44

Post by WalterBright »

burkaman wrote: post #40
WalterBright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about? I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?

Have you ever talked to any of these people you're laughing at? Maybe there is some nuance or background you're not aware of. I'm not a teacher, but I think often when they talk about old textbooks, the issue is that they are physically falling apart, not just that they were published a long time ago. These books are in continuous use by children, so you can't compare it to a book you've had on your shelf for 40 year…

I understand that textbooks fall apart and need replacement. I'm just talking about the complaints that they are outdated.

The complaint I constantly hear from teachers is they work their fingers to the bone preparing lesson plans. I ask why are they making them from scratch, why not share? and don't get a response.

> Every state, district, individual school might have its own rules about what can and must be taught, and teachers often aren't given much say in that.

Then why do they say they spend all this effort creating lesson plans, not even re-using what they used last year? One teacher told me she spent her summer writing lesson plans for next year. I asked why she didn't re-use the ones she wrote for last year? She said they had to be custom made for each student. I asked how could she custom make them in the summer, when she didn't know which students she'd be getting in the fall?

That was the end of that discussion.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#45

Post by InitialLastName »

jimbob45 wrote: post #41
WalterBright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about? I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?

Here’s a terrible example. Old textbooks used to use white names. Now, many schools are required to throw out prospective textbooks that don’t have names representing multiple minorities.

> Now, many schools are required to [x]

In my experience, this is the sort of thing that, when un-cited often means "a school district somewhere had a proposed or implemented policy that, at its least in its least sympathetic interpretation, would require the school to do [x]" interpreted through a few layers of the outrage commentary telephone game.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#46

Post by WalterBright »

mhh__ wrote: post #42
WalterBright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope. Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

I have a bunch of EM textbooks from the 40s and 50s on my bookshelves, the field has changed quite a lot i.e. I understand what they are saying, but the mathematical formalism is very obtuse and the applications are often irrelevant outside of the very basics. The Feynman lectures were recorded prior to the standard model for example, still excellent but hopelessly out of date as an introduction to undergraduate phys…

My high school didn't teach EM, nothing remotely that advanced.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#47

Post by coryrc »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
dehrmann wrote: post #9

I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.

I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about? I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?

You're absolutely correct on your second point.

But for the first point, as poor as research in education is, there have been improvements in educational methods. I read some examples about the Common Core mathematics pedagogy, prepared to be as angry as Feynman, but they were actually teaching kids how to do arithmetic the way I do (which is way better than New Math or brute force methods): 99x5 is 500-5 not 5+(4+5)*10+400. Are their changes more likely to be improvements rather than demerits? I do not know.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#48

Post by WalterBright »

mhh__ wrote: post #43
WalterBright wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is constantly evolving Being an amateur historian myself, most of that smacks of political fashion. The (very) shallow view of history taught by K-12 doesn't need to change. The War of 1812 hasn't moved to 1814 yet. Hitler still lost WW2. Edison still invented the first practical lightbulb, despite all the attempts to dethrone him :-)

Studying history formally isn't about memorising stuff you are interested in. I have a lot of sovietology books now, that doesn't make me a sovietologist because I don't consider myself able to really analyze the sources properly.

Teaching history is not about becoming a historian. Being a professional historian comes with it some standard practices and methods, which is irrelevant if you're not a pro. Though I have learned to not trust "history" books written by journalists, who usually write them because they have a political axe to grind.

As for historical facts, you cannot understand history without knowing any facts about it. For example, you cannot understand the American Revolution without knowing who the major players were and some idea of what their roles were.

BTW, I have an interest in Soviet history. I'm interested in your recommendations on the best books on the topic.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#49

Post by coryrc »

WalterBright wrote: post #44
burkaman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever talked to any of these people you're laughing at? Maybe there is some nuance or background you're not aware of. I'm not a teacher, but I think often when they talk about old textbooks, the issue is that they are physically falling apart, not just that they were published a long time ago. These books are in continuous use by children, so you can't compare it to a book you've had on your shelf for 40 year…

I understand that textbooks fall apart and need replacement. I'm just talking about the complaints that they are outdated. The complaint I constantly hear from teachers is they work their fingers to the bone preparing lesson plans. I ask why are they making them from scratch, why not share? and don't get a response. > Every state, district, individual school might have its own rules about what can and must be taught,…

The teachers I know do reuse their lesson plans when they teach the same class. One of the biggest values of seniority is being able to teach the same class every year.

Why they don't standardize has everything to do with the kind of people who become teachers and what they want to be doing with their time.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#50

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

jimhefferon wrote: post #14

> thank you, thank you You are very welcome. Glad to help. :-) (I'll just say that the TeX Users Group is very interested in improving the PDFs that LaTeX outputs in this regard, and has projects in this direction. They are at https://www.tug.org .)

Just wanted to say my thanks as well, while I have not worked with one of your books, I have a lot of respect for people that choose to release the source of textbooks they created.
Post reply on HN