Arnold Schwarzenegger: Just Say No To Books
June 10th, 2009 by Wendie
I’m really not in the mood for this crap today, but I just heard that Arnie is looking to Terminate — sorry, it’s out of my system now — books from the California school system. Yeah, textbooks are really expensive to buy and California has no money, and yeah, millions of trees would be saved, but it’s so hard for me to think of kids doing all their reading online; I don’t do well with change. I blame the Kindle for this.
Arnold’s reasoning for this change is compassionate. “A world of up-to-date information fits easily into their pockets and on to their computer screens. So why are California’s public school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive text books?”
Well if we weren’t the fattest nation in the world already, this should certainly seal the deal. I know that technology leads to progression, but I still can’t get over the fact that our leaders of tomorrow won’t be getting scoliosis from lugging 30 pounds of crap around in a JanSport book bag. Times are changing so much.
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I have to disagree with you on this one. I think its a great step forward. Heck I’ve been waiting 20 yrs for electronic books and its still just in its infancy. A book is a book regardless of the medium through which its read. I know some people like the physical feel of turn pages and stuff. But I think it makes economic sense. Climate sense. over all a good decision.
a book is not “just” a book. i love the smell of old books, and how the paper brushes against my fingers, how validated i feel when you turn another page. no glare of a screen, pages i can touch and feel and know that someone else has read too. i may be a freak, but i don’t mind.
although in terms of school textbooks, i completely agree. i hate textbooks and how the publishers feel the need to update them as often as possible in order to screw students out of their money. however, for classes such as english or literature where and actual good piece of writing is assigned, i kind of feel that the experience i described above is necessary.
My daughter and I were just talking about this. We agree completely. Books for pleasure should have pages to turn. That chocolate stain in the right hand corner of page 183 is a good thing.
But textbooks are for learning so the format doesn’t matter as much.
Referencing text facts will be hell without pages.. click back reread, click forward, reread, what the heck was the question for that answer.. click, click click, reread reread..and they will be robbed for their precious goods or sell it.., have errors, breakage, system problems and how do work without something working, do I get a new one as my dog ate it .. etc. Batteries are expensive..
Electronic books still have page numbers.
Also, you’re retarded. It’s not any more inconvenient than an actual book.
at least you can mark the pages in a real book to make the flipping back & forth easier.
yeah, then the school district bills you.
You can do this on digital documents with Adobe Reader, standard on most newer computers.
The Sony e-bookreader allows you to make bookmarks.
Stick to things that vibrate, honey. Leave the real toys to the boys.
lol, ignore the last line of my post southernsweety. I think I offended even myself, lol. ;)
look out, southernsweety – if you disagree with jeremy he will call you retarded!
Ctrl F, baby.
They won’t even have to scan pages to look for words. The computer will find keywords itself. I wish that was an option in my day!
won’t they still cost money to access?
Frankly this is all anyone needs to know; http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Apparently Dee Cee thinks this is 2002.
Good thing every poor kid in America has an e-book reader. Wait, what? Oh, they cost about $299 each? Oh well, fuck the poor kids anyways, right? They don’t need books.
(or so Conservative Arnie believes)
e-books are already cheaper for college students- I am sure that if the schools did this they would have some plan for them to be accessible. My old High School already has laptops and kindles that they rent to the students every year that doesn’t cost them anything.
What a great way for a company to do free P.R.-cheap, or free donations.
K-12 public schools typically provide textbooks for free. I assume that the money school districts will be saving from not buying new textbooks would be used to purchase electronic reading devices. So poor kids will NOT be negatively affected.
And actually, Arnold is considered more moderate than conservative (he’s disliked by many Limbaugh-supporting Republicans while liked by many Obama-supporting Democrats).
this post hits home for me…
I have scoliosis (a curvature of the spine) and my doctor attributed it to lugging around my 8 million textbooks from school and back everyday…
I was the type of student who would bring EVERY BOOK home every night, just in case there was something I had to do…yes I was a huge KEENER…still am today….but the scoliosis is NOT cool….
As much as I ALWAYS agree with you Wendie, I have to agree with and support Ah-nold on this one…
Our district was sued, so they have a copy for home and for school. Then they didnt have enough textbooks for another class and some had to share.
I was all over them at the PTA meeting.
Now we are back to 1 copy, and a rolling backpack.
We need to propel our children into this future to be competitive.
E-books are the answer.
Other day said to neice, what crap are doing on the slide today (ipod). Answer-READING TOM SAYWER!
Swear to you, no reason to lie. Free app on itunes-e books of classics. Felt very proud (she is a national honor student). Wasnt reading twilight, warriors, but albiet a racist classic but at least it was a book.
as much as I love reading actual books, I think this is a great idea and Arnold isn’t the first to be talking about it. My entire university is going paperless. It is going to be so much cheaper- I am sick of spending $120 on a book I only open once a semester- they are like ‘oh the bookstore will buy it back!’… um yeah I spent about $430 on books this past semester, and you know how much I was able to sell them back for? $97. NINETY-SEVEN FRICKEN DOLLARS. Yeah electronic books will still cost money but they will be much cheaper. You can just spend money on a kindle or something (um batteries? its not like people are still using double A’s for anything other than their remotes)- you can PLUG THEM IN. for free dollars you can charge your kindle.
in addition its not like NOT carrying textbooks is going to make a fatter nation. Maybe the whole scoliosis problem wont be so bad. I know thats a stretch but im just sayin. the whole ‘fat country’ thing is just stupid. maybe as a nation we should, oh, I dont know, actually let kids go outside? I mean really when I was a kid I was outside all the time. now my sister/cousins/brothers actually schedule time for them to go outside. like 20 minutes 2 days a week. We should stop being pussies about kids and just send them out. geez.
change is inevitable though, this is going to happen all over the US even if this doesn’t fly in Cali. look at the newspaper industry- its dying…
Maybe children will start to associate computers with learning, will start hating them, and will end up outside more…
I like where you went with that thought, Cat.
HAHA thats brilliant.
Yes! Now that is thinking outside the box.
Yes, change is inevitable but there is a huge question of cost with this plan. Not just the initial installation of such technology, but then the personnel to maintain it and trouble shoot, as well as licensing issues and upgrades, and security.
In higher education it was just realized that tuition costs keep skyrocketing not due to faculty salaries or text books (although text books are an obscene racket) but to IT needs/desires/whims.
This could be a great thing, but it’s not exactly going to save money. E-books still need to be paid for, program licenses still need to be procured (and while some companies, Micorosoft for example, gives many schools a lot of free software but Adobe is atrocious to deal with), access is a concern, as is maintaining the servers, the hardware, and the software.
If they just half-ass with people who think they have the skills required to do this, it could be a nightmare for all involved.
He gets paid to lead, not to read…
Hey, this is the line from the Simpsons movie!
maybe terminator doesn’t read, ok, but let the kids alone!!!
wow…
this is a weird thing to do…is arnie running out of things to do?
I know that it would solve the locker problem at my daughter’s school. They have to double up right now and even with that some kids don’t have lockers at all.
Yeah, same locker issue at my former high school.
It was NOT cool.
I am sooooo for this and hope Dumb @ss paterson does something about it too.
We pay about 12k in school taxes. Time to drop the paper books, go green or whatever reason and get our kids the e books.
Our district is online. Or so they say.
I am just for it. I am a techno w.h.o.r.e.
I hate reading things on the computer. I have to print it all out anyways. It hurts my eyes and is impossible to concentrate with all the distractions (like the internet).
I completely agree. I always get a massive headache reading long articles on a computer, and it seems like it would be detrimental to study habits to force kids to read everything electronically.
Working for a major textbook publisher in the K-12 space, I can tell you that we have seen this coming for awhile, but are not quite ready for it.
The one flaw in his argument is the cost. The actual product costs for the books will not go away, it will just be transfered into maintenance costs for all of the server hardware. All of the value-add costs associated with producing the content will not go away either, because, well, we are business for profit, and the content is not free.
So, the per-pupil-year costs will not change. It might cost $60 for a textbook that is used for 6 years. When a customer goes digital only, the costs will be $10/pupil per year.
Just as I suspected. In my limited experience with ebooks, they are more expensive than paperback and unlike paperback can not be resold. So unless school will be getting a substantially better deal on ebooks than the common shlub ( and why shouldn’t they) we will be eating these costs over and over through maintenance, software updates etc etc…
Anything coming out of Arnold’s mouth these day is complete BS. He is just flailing around in a million directions, trying to see what sticks because California is just that screwed.
Working a public school district, we are all holding our breath this summer.
Reading on a computer hurts my eyes and honestly, who actually does their work online?
I and many other people here come to Evil Beet when we’re meant to be working.
Getting rid of books? As I’m watching lost in Austen right now:
“Hear that sound? That’s Jane Austen spinning in her grave”
I too find it difficult to read a long text online. If I have to read something long, I print it.
You talk to a student lately? I asked my nephew about it and wrote what he said.. So Ironic.. Tenth grade mind you, has every game console and three computers, tools around with a MAC, fixes all my electronic problems and wants to be a Marine!
I’m a teacher. I hate the idea. How are they going to pay for the electronic media to read e-text? If the kids pay for it, what are they going to do about the half of the class that is too poor to afford it or dont have internet/computers at home? I dont know, there are just too many problems I can see. Arnie’s ideas have always been pretty lame regarding education.
I support the Governator on this. I’m currently a college student and some of our classes allow us to purchase e-books for cheaper than actual textbooks. It’s so much more convenient to have the ctrl+F function to search for words.
Yes, when you have access to computers. If you have your own laptop or access to state-of-the-art computer labs, then it is much easier. But we’re talking K-12 students, many of whom don’t own computers and many of the schools have very few computers and the ones they do have are outdated.
The reality is that not everyone has access to computers yet. Not even in America.
I think it was agreed kids would have those little e-book reader things. I don’t actually know what to call them. But they would be provided by the school.
Our (Australian) Prime Minister recently gave every grade 9 child in AUSTRALIA a laptop.
Textbooks on paper will be gone in 10 years.
This is actually a great idea.
I’m a student and lugging around textbooks is a HUGE pain. I’ve always thought, why not put all the information we need in computer form?
So much more convenient having all the information from every class in one convenient device. The schools won’t have to pay replacing damaged textbooks anymore or buying new ones when the old ones become outdated.
I’m all for it.