Textbooks: Boring Students to Death
It’s time for a change.
After my first go at teaching AP United States History, the most boring course I can think of, students told me that they would have benefited from a bigger textbook.
My overachievers weren’t content with 927 dry, boring pages from historian Alan Brinkly’s 13th edition of American History: A Survey. They wanted something they could really sink their teeth into — that no bullet could possibly penetrate.
“We have friends at other schools, and their textbook is much bigger and better,” I remember my students telling me.
When it comes to AP American history textbooks, I guess size does matter — at least as far as students are concerned.
Many textbooks exceed 1,500 pages. Perhaps students would prefer memorizing and regurgitating endless facts and figures from these gigantic bricks, which in no way represents the content students cover in a traditional history course — introductory or otherwise.
I ask Dr. Aldo Reglado, my friend and colleague in the history department at Palmer Trinity, what he thinks about textbooks. Regaldo has especially keen insight, seeing as he also teaches history courses at the University of Miami.
