Computers are killing our schools

In My Humble Opinion
1

I would have put this in GD but I was unable to find any cites to back it other than my own opinion…maybe a GD will blossom

I believe that computers are killing our school systems.

Before anyone has a panic attack…

Our school systems are in crippling budget shortfalls nationwide, many are laying off teachers and cutting programs like arts and music even shutting down libraries.

Our schools can barely afford textbooks and affordable lunches for the students, yet many have carts full of laptop PC’s linked by wireless networks, buildings setup with high speed networks and the appropriate routers, switches and hubs to provide these services to hundreds of end users. These types of installations often run $100+ an hour for specialized labor to install and tens of thousands in hardware and materials.

In addition many of these items require additional staff to maintain and
troubleshoot, monitor for inappropriate use, and upgrade as needed.

Because the world of computers is dynamic and fast changing it creates additional needs to keep staff and teachers trained on the newer hardware and software packages as purchasing those items of hardware and software as they become obsolete and of limited use.

All of us dopers are PC users and most of us understand the issues presented above, many even more intimately than myself.

In the world of business, computers significantly accellerate many procedures that cost money, if they can be done faster they can be done more inexpensively, often creating a significant return on investment. The world of present day retail and manufacturing all show this. My job alone 30 years ago would have been performed by a team of 10-12 clerks. Thanks to relational database, sorting and crossreferencing six million pieces of product across 7500 different product type is easy for one person. Do computers allow teacher to teach more material more quickly? Are they able to handle more students more effectively? Administratively many tasks are much quicker and more accurate for teachers to handle via computer like gradebooks, or writing assignments and tests via word processor instead of typing or being dependent on premade materials. Some forms of testing are more easily handled by computer but once again the skills to use that computer must be taught first.

My suggestion. Kill classroom PC distribution programs, every kid does not need a PC on their desk and it really dosen’t fix anything. A shared computer lab is far more cost effective and for pre-4 is probably overkill. Once kids start hitting 5th-6th grades a mandatory basic PC class could be taught to catch kids that have not already learned at home and from there on out they would only be used in classes that called for it and additional PC issues would be taught in electives that relate to them on the junior high and HS levels. Skill specific classes later on in school have immense potential in use of computers but if its a matter of $50-$60K a year in hardware to outfit a classroom with laptops and wireless networking or providing additional teacher would the reduction in class size be more effective in better teaching our children than the addition of computers?

2

Mrs. Kunilou could probably address all your questions but she isn’t here. However, I can address one. A lot of the funding schools spend on technology has been specifically earmakred by the state or federal government or private grant as being for technology. You couldn’t use that money to hire more staff even if you wanted to.

Of course, the law of unintended consequences means that the school often ends up spending more to train and maintain than it received in the first place. But long-term costs are difficult to calculate and evaluate when someone is waving a $100,000 grant in your face.

3

Eh, my mum’s stories of school in the 50’s and 60’s are enough for me to think that education has a loooong way to go before it slides back into being that crappy again.

4

Not only are most of those computer acquired with specifically earmarked funding, but a lot of it’s grant money - not from regular funding and required to be spent on specific things.

5

But still, there’s the question of whether the schools would be better off if those who were doing the granting earmarked the funds for other things than computers.

6

Maybe they would, but the question is moot. The money is there for computers, or it isn’t there at all.

7

The question may be moot from the point of view of the schools, but it certainly isn’t moot from the point of view of those providing the funding.

8

Of course it isn’t moot. It’s moot to the teachers and school board employees, but it sure isn’t moot to the taxpayer. These grants are not being handed down by God; the decision’s being made somewhere on Earth.

Of course, Cliff Stoll predicted all this years ago.

9

The way I feel is mainly; computers are here to stay and it would be irresponsible in the extreme not to have that technology, not just to teach with, but to teach the students to use as well. We’re actually trying to catch up since we’re running about ten years behind where we should be, not thinking about axing the programs.

Computers make it possible for me to find all sorts of resources for teaching my students I couldn’t get any other way. Our library is pathetic thanks to budget cuts and our tendency to jump on or be forced into every education fad that comes along. But even if it were decent it still couldn’t compare to what can be found on-line for my students and for me. I can teach more, more quickly, and more precisely because of the internet and different software. In many instances it costs less too. Textbooks are quite costly, but if I can have the kids access that same information via computer, the cost savings is enormous.

Speaking of which, tech costs are a drop in the bucket compared to other things we spend money on. A million dollars is nothing to most districts. Our 2000+ student campus is supported adequately by two tech people, and it was just one guy until last year. Part of this is because a lot of teachers still don’t use computers, but they’re retiring or getting with the program and use is increasing. That’ll mean more money spent on computers, but less money spent other places, because computers make certain parts of the education process obsolete, as with my textbook example. For another, take attendance(ha!), it’s one place where the difference is huge. We went from stone age to space age and the difference was felt in the budget not just because a lot of things were no longer needed, but because better attendance procedures led to better attendance and that led to increased money from the gov. Kids with better attendance do better in school. That makes my job easier and I can do a better job and then the school gets gov. funds for meeting certain goals and such. And that’s just attendance!

Training teachers isn’t a big concern for me. As teachers become more familiar with what’s out there, less training will be needed. Already we have our newest teachers coming to us with that knowledge already in place. The district’s teacher in-services cover most training at no extra cost to the district because they’re in the budget whether we use them for computers or to play tiddly winks. Add to that free or very low-cost training offered by the county and the fact that we have to put in (in my state) 150 hours of continuing education every five years, a good chunk of it on our own dime, so very little cost to the district there.

Basically it boils down to whatever we spend on technology, we’re going to more than re-coup it elsewhere because of that same technology. The cherry on top is that same technology will also allow us to do a better job.

I agree with you on when and how kids should be introduced to computers. Some schools are starting a little early, before the ankle biters have even learned their A B Cs, they’re using computers. I have yet to see proof that this helps the students any better than more traditional methods, in many cases. I wouldn’t wait until fifth grade, but I’d want them out of kinder first.

If you want to help education, tell Bush to shove his damned No Child Left Behind and support us in ways that will truly work. Like technology! Ironically, we’d probably have a better chance at actually not leaving any child behind if we could focus on technology. We don’t need a computer on every desk yet, but we need more than we currently have. Luckily, that situation is improving, slooooowly. We’re sort of in an awkward stage of development where we’re running around like one-armed paper-hangers, trying to get stuff funded, then in place, before we have to upgrade. It would help if we could focus our attentions on technology instead of dropping it in favor of traditional methods, already in place, because of the insanity that is the NCLB timeline. [sub]My gripe with NCLB is that it assumes that all kids, in all schools, in all communities are the same. Wrong! What works in LA might be a disaster for us, but NCLB is forcing everyone to march to the tune of a really crappy drummer. [/sub]

10

This reminds me of a GD thread I’ve been wondering if I should start, aftering reading The Language Police.

I came in here two make two basic points, but it seems like everyone’s beaten me to it. In my experience at a 25,000+ school district computers aren’t on every desk; there usually is one in every class for the teacher and there is at least one shared computer lab. Occasionally, once or twice a decade or so, they upgrade all their computers to newer, “better” (I use quotes because it’s the gummint) models. All that money comes from grants meant just for that purpose.

I’m not sure if technology is the big answer (I am with you Ashes on NCLB being a waste and needs to die), but to counter the OP that it is bankrupting the schools some schools, like an Arizona one I read about recently, are moving to having a computer for every schoolchild. As it turns out giving everyone a laptop and learning CDs is actually cheaper in the long run than traditional methods. Seems stupid, but if a laptop is bought once and a textbook is minimum $40 and a kid has half a dozen textbooks or more per year and they’re replaced…

11

My school’s computers were donated by Bill Gates’s charitable organization. They’re pretty nice; I took back many of the mean things I’ve said about Gates when I got mine. But none of the things I’ve said about Windows.

12

One problem with this is that a laptop in the hands of a schoolkid is far more likely to get broken or stolen than a textbook.

13

Allow me to be the first to demand a cite that a laptop and learning CDs would be cheaper than textbooks. You’d be lucky to get three years out of the average laptop - very lucky indeed, given that kids will break them all the time. At a very modest $750 per laptop, plus CD costs, plus technical support, parts replacement, peripherals, networking costs, etc., you’re easily blowing by what textbooks would cost you.

14

I spent nearly a decade working in a State education system in Australia, as part of an effort to integrate technology into the classroom. Obviously things are different in Australia than in the US, but I can respond to some issues here.

I’ve answered similiar objections a number of times. :slight_smile: My take on this is, that in a world where technology is ubiquitious, and given our increasing dependence on technology, we are doing our students a disservice by not giving them the opportunity to become technologically literate. This is even more important for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, where there families may not be able to afford computers in their homes.

Not necessarily. In fact lots of teachers and schools do very good work on machines that are not the most up-to-date. There are standard configurations which are upgraded every three or so years, and teacher’s laptops are upgraded every three years, but three years is about the standard age of a piece of equipment.

Nor is it necessary to keep upgrading the software or training on that software … most upgrades are not major ones, in general it’s just tweaking things. Any teacher who already has a grasp of how a particular piece of software works, probably won’t need special professional development to learn to use an upgrade.

There is something of a myth that you can’t do anything without the latest hardward/software which isn’t necessarily true. Much of what many of us use our computers for in a day to day, personal and professional sense, don’t require the latest high-end machine.

The State Government I worked for used special grants to buy computer equipment, so of it Federally-funded. The aim of those grants was to allow students to have access to computers and other technologies, the bigger picture was that both State and Federal Governments had their eyes on the global economy, where the importance of knowledge work and a technologically literate workforce was become increasingly important.

Each child doesn’t need a computer on their desk, research shows that the best, across-the-school ratio, is about one computer per three students, in their classrooms and easily accessible during their normal lesson times.

Research and experience also showed us that shared computer labs don’t work for the kinds of things schools are trying to achieve by integrating technology into classrooms.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that you want kids to learn to use computers as a useful tool for research, for writing up notes, for developing presentations, for publishing their content, for collaboration and communication.

The aim is that computers become a tool that students will be able to use fluidly, skillfully and appropriately. This can’t happen if the only access kids get is in specialist computer labs.

What generally happens with labs is that there is competition for access to the space, and that access tends to devolve by default, onto those class called “technology”. This either means that the Information Technology teachers get first dibs on the space, or that the space is only used for IT classes.

This means that if a teacher gets the use of the space, which might be once every couple of weeks, they have to teach a special “information technology” class which requires the use of the computers for a two hour block, not as part of their usual curriculum, but as a thing apart.

This doesn’t help students learn about how to use technology as a tool, amongst other tools, to help them with their learning.

Many kids don’t learn this at home because either their parents can’t afford a computer, or their parents don’t know much about them. Lots of parents don’t know much about computers. I spent an awful lot of time explaining how the internet worked to worried parents … I’ve got a pretty good idea of how technologically illiterate many people are. If you work in a technical environment, or or spend a lot of time on a computer, it’s easy to over-estimate the computer literacy of the average person.

And this is my point … it’s not about computers being taught as a specialist subject, it’s about computers as an everyday tool to faciliate all the things we use the technology for, including research, producing and publishing content, communications, collaborations, design, and hundreds of other things.

In the schools I worked with, typically primary schools had computers in the classrooms, senior schools (years 7-12) more typically had computer labs. What tended to happen is that kids left primary school with really good computer skills. I’ve sat in a classroom full of 8 year olds using multimedia software to produce animated videos about the animals they were studying.

Those kids get to high school and instead of having constant access to the computers, they might get a two hour block in the computer lab every couple of weeks, and their skills decreased dramatically.

As a result, high schools were funded to build access in all their classrooms, not just in labs, in order to allow students the kind of access they had in primary school.

A typical classroom where English is being taught would use a computer for a whole lot of tasks. Students might use it too do research on a topic they want to write about, they might look up newspaper and journal articles online, they might produce several drafts of an essay for assessment, they might use specialist software to publish their work in a variety of formats, they might participate in a collaborative project with other students in other schools in their State, country or internationally, they might contact an expert in a field of interest and task them questions.

Obviously in most senior schools there is also a specialist subject for students interested in technical careers in computing, but then, most of use use computers for professional and personal tasks, but comparitively few of us are programmers or network designers of whatever. Doesn’t mean we don’t need to know how to use the technology.

Two things that will always make a difference in schools are good teachers and smaller class sizes. The thing that makes the most difference is a good teacher. But a good teacher with access to good technology can do extraordinary things which not only enrich their students with learning that wasn’t possible before the technology was available, but enables to enrich their own professional practice.

If you’re interested in examples I can provide you with some.

There are lots of issues with technology in schools. It is expensive, it is often poorly used, it can be used by politicians as a substitute for doing the things they should be doing for schools.

In a school where kids arrive in the morning hungry, then computers might not be seen as important … but on the other hand, if kids are already disadvantaged, are you going to disadvantage them further by shutting them out of access to technology much of the rest of the world uses everyday?

15

I’m not going to argue that every kid should get a laptop, seeing what happens to textbooks makes me shudder to think what could happen to a laptop that’s carried around daily. More kids would take care of their laptop than take care of their texts, though. Knowing they’re going to owe the school big bucks if it’s lost or damaged will go a long way toward keeping the laptop in good shape. A lot of schools have gone to a computer at school and then one at home for those who don’t have one already. Even in our community (16,000 california dllrs/yr for a family of four), we’ve got a good third who have one at home, with a pretty decent number available in the public library and at school after hours.

What I want to point out is the cost of textbooks to a school. Most kids will have schedules where they need at least one text per class, for five periods a day. There will always be classes where a text is rarely used such as PE or Fine Art, though that’s changing as well. So, at my school, we have 2000 students needing at least five books a day at a cost of 80 dollars each. Yes, that’s correct, 80 smackers. Some books cost less but that’s also factoring in workbooks, massive copying expenses, and books that cost more, and the occasional class that requires an additional text. You can see I’m probably low-balling it at 80 dollars.

We’re not finished yet. You can’t order just one book per student. They lose them all the time, so you need to order extras, let’s say a extremely reasonable ten percent. I know that seems pretty high, but I’m going for ten percent over three years, since you definitely can lose ten percent in that time. We’re not finished. Literature classes have to order the books they’ll be reading. Our school-- I’d say a shockingly low three books per student at about 20 dollars each.

2200 = number of students + extra (notice I’m not factoring our current growth of 200 per year)
5 x 3= periods where a student will need a text over three years
3 x 3= reading books over three years (a bonus: not counting these books are lost at a higher rate)

(2200 x 15) + (2200 x 9)

So we’ll need 33,000 texts and 19,800 reading books

33,000 x 80 for texts = 2,640,000

19,800 x 20 for reading books = 396,000

But don’t stop there folks! We have to have three full time clerks to keep the books in good repair and stored properly and so on. Then there are the times when we hire extra clerks at the beginning, middle and end of the year. Add to that the extra clerks we’ll have to hire when we receive these new books and have to get them ready to be given out.

3 full time clerks = 35,000 x 3 = 105,000 x 3 years = 315,000
3 extra temp clerks = 15,000 x 3 = 45,000 x 3 years = 135,000

Grand total = 3,486,000

And that seems low. Because there’s no way to calculate teachers who will want to change texts, reading books, workbooks, or add a reading program that requires over 100,000 dollars in books, another 50 thou in software and computers to test the kids, re-enforcing workbooks, training teachers, hiring new reading clerks, building a new structure to house all of those books and/or teach the program, maintenance people to deliver and pick up books (and all the attendant temp clerk expenses required when starting a new program).

Yes, that really happens. You can bank on it happening. I have no idea what the new building would cost, but let’s say you do it on the cheap and get a trailer with all the desks and such that’ll be needed and don’t forget all the extra wiring and other set-ups that’ll be neccessary. I’m just going to throw out 1,000,000 dollars for the whole shebang, even though it’s essentially the gov. running the show and you know nothing’s going to be done cheaply.

So, over three years, texts would cost one high school 4,486,000 dollars, assuming I haven’t made an error somewhere, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Most of the set up connecting everything at the school site has already been done. I haven’t a clue how much it would cost to take it from there. Maybe less, maybe more, but the thing is, it’s going to have to be done eventually. It’s like buying milk for your family. You have to have milk when you’ve got kids. The price of the milk doesn’t matter beyond getting a little better deal at Food for Less vs. Vons. You’re going to buy it anyway.

America is no longer a country where you can take your high school education and know you’ll have a decent job for the rest of your life at a factory or shop. Heck, maybe we’ll all get lucky and those engineers who’re out of jobs lately can get themselves hired on at our schools. You get a whole thirty minutes for lunch, and if you find a good place to hide, you might even get to take your breaks. You don’t get paid from the end of june to the end of september, so budget wisely.

You know, I really do seem like a technology freak, don’t I? I pretty normal really. Really!

16

You’re going to ask poor families to replace laptops?

I’m not talking about kids heaving them around like Frisbees. Laptops just break; they’re notorious for it. I work in a company staffed with intelligent adults, and the IT department is forever fixing laptops, especially the hard drives, which just decide to die all on their own with amazing regularity.

Dude, I’ll need a cite for that, too. I didn’t pay eighty bucks a pop for most of my UNIVERSITY textbooks, and those were vastly more advanced texts, often written by the greatest minds in their fields, bought in far lower quantities, sold to a more captive market, and I was paying a retail price. In Canadian dollars, no less. My first year Calculus text was $29, and it’s a thick, elaborately published text that I probably got screwed a 50% markup on. 30%, anyway. If your school board is paying $80 a shot for a shitty little Grade 4 math text, the purchasing department is being run by either the Mafia or Halliburton. I sincerely doubt a school board would pay $20 for most math texts. A full slate of paperbacks for Grade 8 English class would not cost forty bucks.

$80 a text is insane. I don’t buy that figure for an instant.

Jesus, man, go to a bookstore. The classics cost $8.95 a shot at Borders. On what planet do schools pay $20 for every book you study in Literature? Most of those books are in the public domain; you could probably buy them in bulk for five bucks apiece.

No school on Earth employs three full time employees dedicated to keeping track of textbooks, unless it’s run by the criminally insane. In fact, I’ve never heard of a school employing even ONE person who was responsible for textbooks. The idea is laughable. When have you ever heard of someone who claimed to be a Textbook Clerk? No school board in North America is in a position to waste money on that.

Since your cost and labour estimates are profoundly wrong, I don’t think any of the calculations are even close to reality.

In 2003-2004, the Toronto District School Board spent a total of $66 million on textbooks. The Toronto District School Board has 558 schools, 450 elementary and about 100 high schools - it covers all of Toronto, an enormous city with about two and a half million residents, and educates about half its students. It is a perfectly good school board providing top of the line educations, and if anything they’re notorious for spending way too much. But that’s just **$120,000 ** per school on textbooks.

Is that unusual? Well, fortunately, Toronto has another, separate school board, the Catholic school board (in Ontario, by constitutional law, there must be public schools providing both secular and Catholic educations.) The Catholic board spent… $20.8 million in 2004-2005. That’s over 201 schools - about $100,000 per school.

Your estimate is, I would guess, about thirty times higher than reality.

17

If they lost or broke it, of course. While a laptop would be more expensive than most items lost by students, this is how it works. If you know your family is too poor to afford replacing it, then take care of it. If it breaks because of something they didn’t do, then no they don’t pay for it. Also recall I’m talking about high school students who are fully capable of taking proper care of a laptop. Really. We have a few laptops available to students right now and not a single incident so far. What they’d do with the grade schools I don’t know. Besides, the goal should be a computer in every home, not a laptop, if they’re so darned fragile.

Remember that I stated 80 dollars because I wasn’t itemizing all the other costs that go into using textbooks. I don’t have our ‘board-approved’ publishers catalogs on hand, being summer break the way it is, but here’s one cite. It’s an annoying website in that it won’t take you directly to the pricing of the text. Click on purchase and you’ll see what I mean about what books actually cost. Also note that literature books can be in the low to mid-range compared to some science texts. Take a look at what else can be neccessary. Not everybody is lucky enough to have more than a few extras, sometimes just the teacher package, but you can see how it adds up. Don’t forget to add in taxes and shipping.

You’re also fortunate in the price of your college texts. Mine ranged anywhere from 120 to forty dollars and I shudder to think what they’d have cost if they were made to withstand a highschool student’s abuse. They get trashed even when the kids take good care of them, but hauling around five or six books, plus a couple three binders, tends to take it’s toll.

Textbooks have got to be hardback, tough hardback, not the usual sort found in bookstores. Even with proper care a paperback would be in dire shape by mid year and in tatters by summer. So paperback isn’t an option.

Believe as you wish, I’ve only been in the business for 13 years, had both parents put in their forty years, about half of that as department chair (They do the purchasing, the school board does dick except rubber stamp the request. YSchool BoardMMV), and administrator. Lest I forget; I’ve also got three aunts, two uncles and four cousins who teach. Even if I didn’t hear from other schools at national conferences and on-line, my family is not prone to silence about what is going on in our various state’s schools. So, our district does employ three full time clerks: Mrs Patino, the head clerk, Ms Araujo, and Mrs Cazares. In fact, I’ve never heard of even one school, much less an entire district that didn’t have a text clerk. It’s not a waste to spend money on the proper number of clerks. When we finally demanded three clerks, we began to see how much money had been wasted over decades because we’d skimped. As for being run by the criminally insane, well, it would explain some of the decisions made by the District Administration on other issues, like the air conditioning fiasco last year.

You are aware there are many districts that don’t provide a text for every student? They’re called class sets and they don’t leave the classroom. They are the bane of a teacher’s existence because it’s nearly impossible to keep track of who damaged a text and since there’s no sense of accountability they need to be replaced more often. Add to that, since they cannot be sent home with the student, the teacher then has to make a huge number of copies on the ol’ xerox machine. The money to do that comes out of the district photocopying budget, not the text budget. We currently employ one full time clerk and one part time clerk to do the photocopying, and they just barely manage to keep their heads above water when the machines actually work. The top of the line copiers we have break down about once a week and need replacing every three years. Before we decided to splurge on quality, we were replacing at least one machine every year, out of the three main copiers. There are also ten or so lighter duty office copiers that are used when the main copiers are down.

So, there are districts who cheap out on texts and students pay the price. I’m working from the point of view that if we properly fund the computer program, we’ll properly fund the textbook program. Especially because of the Williams lawsuit last year that basically handed California it’s ass on a platter because proper materials weren’t being provided it’s students. So we are not allowed, by law, not to make sure there are oodles of books for every kid.

Disbelieve me all you want RickJay. The part of my last post that was most important to understand had nothing to do with the accuracy of my numbers on the texts. In fact, I’ll say that I was completely wrong in every single one of my calculations and that in actuality it costs exactly one penny to buy all textbooks for all schools in the entire continent of North America. That does not detract from our need to bring computer technology into the schools in a significant way. Whatever it costs to accomplish this will be a bargain. That’s what I was really talking about.

Maybe I shouldn’t have distracted readers from my real message with all those numbers. Darn me for wanting to guesstimate the cost for laughs.

18

Where do you go to college (oh, Canada). Well, Canada must be a very different place than the United States. I majored in a relatively light reading major (lots of classes without textbooks and lots of regular bought-at-the-bookstore books) and my quarterly book costs for three classes was around $250. Heck, I’ve paid $80 for a reader (a bunch of photocopied articles bound together) before. Math, science and other books are regularly around $100-$200.

Here are some cites:
College textbooks average $900 a year, 1/5th of tuition. Americans pay more than other countries for the same books.
New college texts cost $102 on average

Part of it is that purchasing regulations in the US are so controlling that choices really are limited, and part of it is that college costs in America are so absurd that students (and their parents) have kind of left the world of financial reality for a while and can’t really complain about a hundred dollar textbook for what is essentially a several thousand dollar class.

19

It doesn’t matter who is at fault here; you’re placing a potentially huge financial burden on people. This is public education; they HAVE to have access to it. What’re you going to do if they simply don’t have the money?

It would be, frankly, a Godawful nightmare. IT management is a science unto itself, and school boards struggle with it just to keep the principals and teachers running.

Sorry, but there just aren’t a whole lot of textbooks in this cite, and the one there is is a pretty hefty looking book.

Virtually all schools use paperbacks. Didn’t you study Shakespeare? Surely you weren’t using a hardcover copy of “Henry IV, Part One”?

Whoa, there.

In your earlier post you figured on three clerks PER SCHOOL. All your calculations were done by school, and that’s how you came out with a grand total of about three and a half million for a school of 2200 students.

Are you now saying that part of the calculations were for an entire school board? Why did you add it to the textbook cost for just one school?

And now suddenly it’s back to a school again. Does this position exist at the school or the district level?

You can then back off and say “the heck with it, we need computer technology in the schools” but the entire point of this thread is the cost efficiency of mass computerization of classrooms. Computer provision cannot be examined in absence of an examination of the COST.

20

Most schools in Texas have their bawdlerized Shakespeare in gigantic Literature books. Cost a bundle. Everyone student gets one; and every class gets a set. Those things do not cost $40.

Textbooks in the States generally cost more than they do in Canada because market conditions are not the same. In the States millions of dollars go into the creation of a book, which is then changed and edited by different “sensitivity and bias” panels and suggestions/demands made by special interest groups who lobby the various government textbook adoption bodies.

There’s a lot of money to be made if you get a good contract, but if your book gets rejected by one of the big states (California and Texas specifically) few textbook companies can afford thaat without going under. That’s why there are only less than half a dozen major textbook companies in the US, who are huge corporations with a lot of overhead to pay. That results in the price of the product being raised, which must be paid after a state or district approves the book, similar to how Clearchannel raises concert prices so much.

CDs, in theory, would be cheaper, being easier to manufacture (as well as update) and not as expensive to create. Part of that requires textbook adoption to go to a district level though.
Some stuff in school was in paperback. I remember doing The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail from paperback, but we had to read the play out loud during class because there was only enough in the class set for more than 30some people (the amount of people in one English class).