Marketing teacher, Seth Godin, calls assigning a textbook to a class, ‘academic malpractice.’
Read what he thinks about the limitations of textbooks.
Does his solution also apply to teachers of theology?
“Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. (it’s part of their job, remember?)”
“When you have a class to teach, assemble 100 of the best pieces, put them in a pdf or on a kindle or a website (or even in a looseleaf notebook) and there, you’re done. You just saved your intro marketing class about $15,000. Every semester. Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness.”
Read the entire article and email it around your teaching team for discussion. You may not agree with him entirely but it may alter how you resource your class:
Seth Godin, Textbook Rant, 14 June 2009. Seth has 44,000 subscribers to his blog. Be one of his subscribers.
Dr Geoff Pound
Image: Seth Godin.