Mawgablog

Governor Schwarzenegger says scrap paper, adopt e-readers for state students

Not a lot of time just at the moment. But, I’ve just read that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, (or Kellifwahnya, as he says) wants to get rid of textbooks and replace them with e-readers, for the state’s school children.

Doing so would save a lot of money, he reckons. Textbooks go out of date too quickly, it is claimed.

I’m ambivalent about this, given that so much of the cost of textbooks isn’t so much the printing and distributing, but the publishers’ costs, paying the authors and so on. Added to that is the cost of the e-readers themselves, which cost several hundred dollars a hit. Theoretically, it’s not the worst idea in the world. The biggest problem with text books is that they’re bulky and heavy and ungainly, and searchability etc using your Sony reader or Amazon Kindle wouldn’t be half bad. Furthermore, kids could potentially have access to much more than their prescribed text books with an e-reader. Remember trying to do a term paper and looking for a book that just wasn’t in your local library?

Unless, however, he’s got the ear of a Jeff Bezos or a Mr Sony or someone else, it feels a little bit of a false economy however. Will they really save the money they think they will, given the costs of purchasing and possibly of durability and unforeseen uses and/or abuses and/or mishaps with the children?

I’ll watch this one with interest.

Oh, one more thing. The link I supplied was for a Guardian story on the subject. Interestingly, reading The Times on the same subject is far more instructive and informative. No references to old Gutenberg (Johann, not Steve) spinning in his grave at the thought of the actions taken by so uncouth a person — both Austrian and American after all! Islington’s chattering classes must have had a fit when they read that.

Check the Times version here.