Textbooks Over Tech: How MCPS Can Improve Learning with Traditional Tools (Opinion)

October 29, 2024

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MCPS should use textbooks over Chromebooks especially in elementary school.  Students are missing out on a vital skill of reading a book, taking notes, and answering questions at the end of each chapter. It is a critical skill for college and life.

Textbooks are a great equalizer. A child has access to a comprehensive overview of a subject.  Parents can more readily help their children. MCPS can pick and choose what to focus on in their curriculum, but all the information is there for students. This is especially important in subjects like social studies and science which are taught with random snippets of information in short handouts and videos.

Additionally, textbooks would help fill the gap of the basic information that is not taught. The current trend, nationwide not just in MCPS, is to assume students will somehow have knowledge of basic facts on their own.  Through Google? Through parents? Teachers in secondary honors social studies classes spend class time teaching students the 7 continents and 50 US states on a map. This is one example of basic knowledge that should have been taught in elementary school. A science example is teachers in high school honors biology teaching basic information about organ systems in the human body. Elementary school students should know what their hearts, brains, kidneys, and intestines do at a simple level.

Currently only AP or high-level high school math courses use textbooks. This is late in a school career and inequitable to students not in these courses who are deprived of textbook learning. Elementary school learning should be heavy on books and light on electronics. The need for technology has been oversold, again nationally not just in MCPS. Technology becomes obsolete. Is it really good use of elementary students’ and teachers’ time for second graders to handwrite an assignment and then type the assignment with one finger, one key at a time on the keyboard? Student outcomes may very well improve if teachers were given textbooks and freedom to be creative and teach the material in their style.

MCPS should survey graduates who are college students. They have a lot to say about how they were prepared (or not) for college. They have a wealth of information, and their experience could inform MCPS decisions on curriculum, textbooks, and exams.

MCPS has already started taking steps to lessening tech in schools such as a new phone policy pilot and limits place upon social media usage. In a recent parent, teacher and student survey that the new superintendent Dr. Taylor did, phones were repeatedly raised as a top issue but many don’t seem to be as aware of the pervasive use of technology in place of books or other learning methods especially with our youngest learners.

One elementary parent reported that in many cases just playing videos online is used in place of learning in many classes for their elementary age students. Even though not used all the time, their children have reported various uses of video in many different classes throughout the school year.

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