Necessity once again breeds invention, this time in California where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a deal to stock up classrooms with free e-books in lieu of their costly and cumbersome paper predecessors.
Echoing the national mantra "less is more," the Governor seeks to reduce the state's education budget by "hundreds of millions of dollars" by supplying math and science teachers with 10 free digital textbooks.
Critics claim that classroom technology deficiencies will result in a wasted effort, but Superintendent Jack O'Connell ranks "provid[ing] computers for every student" very high on his "wish list."
As the cost of brick-and-mortar publishing continues to rise -- and the cost of e-readers and personal technology plummets -- the move seems to make total sense, provided the text books meet the educational standards. Having taught high school English from tattered textbooks and scribbled-on paperbacks, I saw first-hand the incredible amount of waste created by the educational system -- especially given that most of the canonized "classics" are available online, free and legal. Even if forced by the heavy hand of recession, the move by Gov. Schwarzenegger is a significant one, as it could spread a plague of common sense to boards of education across the whole country.
SFGate.com has the full story on California's digital shift: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/12/BA2Q1973QE.DTL
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