In the beginning of my senior year, a very remarkable teacher told us that textbooks were a waste of time and money. Being a left-brained thinker, I just about imploded. My back, however, rejoiced at the idea. The previous year it had been tortured with a two-inch thick American History book along with a chemistry, algebra, and English Lang. book, each married to a binder just as packed with paper. Throughout the course of the year, our teacher would pass out packets of notes that would go along with each lesson. He would make us think about the answers, not spoon-feeding us one. This irritated me. A visual learner myself, I wanted examples.
Before the first nine weeks was up, I could all but rejoice at how light my load was every day when I walked into school. All I had to carry was a single binder, a single inch thick. Mr. Doe (as we'll call him) would fully expect us to keep up with those packets until the very last day of school. Again, I thought this was stupid; but then I realized how much I was retaining. How much everyone was retaining! Instead of simply copying down answers from the back of the book -- which many of the textbooks have, especially in mathematics -- we had to invent ways to get the correct answer.
On the last day, Mr. Doe told us that it was never his job to teach us math. He wasn’t there so he could teach us textbook math (he laughed at his own pun, too). The sole reason he was there so that he could make us into problem solvers, not robots that memorize information.
“Textbooks are worthless,” he said. “They teach you nothing you can’t find out on your own.”
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