SwordOfJustice

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The best sort of diplomacy: sex and food.

With the rise of internet enabled self education, do you think textbooks, both online and off, will remain a viable part of the education landscape?

It seems to be the case that textbooks are aggregated information from other, often better sources. With general access to the original sources on the rise, it would appear that textbooks are becoming an unnecessary middle man that distills or waters down the sources they pull from.

Even in formal academic environments, I would argue that textbooks cheapen the overall quality of the education by separating the student from the information. The best classes I have taken didn't require packaged textbooks, but instead required us to directly read the works of great thinkers and interact with their ideas directly, rather than simply read about them.

Too many of the textbooks I have been required to read in my own education have simply presented watered down versions of the ideas they represent.

I don't mean to suggest that textbooks aren't valuable, I just think they are relied on too heavily by educators at all levels.