# Have you ever used a full textbook in 1 semester/school year? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 31, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067 "2010-08-31T00:33:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![congodwarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@congodwarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/congodwarf)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/1 "2010-08-31T00:33:42Z")
I was looking through my Algebra book today and as I browsed the back of the book, I realized that when in high school, we never made it more than 3/4 of the way through the book. I now wonder if my 1 semester Algebra class will be the same. I noticed this trend in all classes, not just math. When we finished Algebra for the year and started Geometry the following year, they assumed we were well versed in Algebra. But, if we only finished 3/4 of the book, obviously we weren’t well versed. If we only made it through 3/4 of our American History book, we might have missed out on the entire 20th century (which we did - twice). The same went for all 4 of my science classes and my 3 years of Latin classes. My anatomy class made it further than any other class but we were all very dedicated students who took kindly to a fast pace. Even then we didn’t finish the book. Does anyone else notice this? I’m not talking about 2 semester college books like the Spanish book they have for Spanish 1 and Spanish 2. I’m talking books that are supposed to be used in 1 class only. Are these books even designed to be finished in 1 year/semester? ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/2 "2010-08-31T00:56:01Z")
We certainly did in law school. Mind, in law school, we didn’t read textbooks–we mostly read casebooks, which are books of published legal decisions. Ours tended to be (for the most part) published by our school and made up of cases selected by our professors. The number and complexity of the cases was dependent upon how much the professor knew he or she could get through in a semester, so we tended to finish them in time for the exam. I will add, however, that when it came to commercially-produced casebooks, we didn’t finish some of them. But even in courses that used a textbook (e.g. Alternate Dispute Resolution, and Advocacy), we tended to work our way through the entire book. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/3 "2010-08-31T01:11:29Z")
In fact, in one course, we never even used the textbook. Very expensive textbook too, that was not used the next year, so it had no resale value. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/4 "2010-08-31T02:38:18Z")
Oh, no, never. Not in university, anyway. Many classes, I just avoided buying the book until absolutely required too. I was tired of buying books that never got serious usage. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/5 "2010-08-31T02:43:04Z")
Most of my Accounting coursework covered the whole textbook over the quarter. Seems that when you are supposed to be preparing people for the CPA exam, they actually expect you to cover the material. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/6 "2010-08-31T02:55:09Z")
I was an accounting major and we finished the books, too. In the accelerated math class I teach we finish the book, but in the pre-algebra class I follow the state frameworks and the kids only use the parts of the book that go with the frameworks. There is no math book that covers only what I need. The level I teach is junior high, so nowhere near college or law school. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/7 "2010-08-31T03:33:51Z")
Used _two_ whole textbooks in one semester of Constitutional Law as an undergrad. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/8 "2010-08-31T05:22:57Z")
I took a community college course in American History where we sort of used the whole textbook. We were tested on it all, anyway–we were expected to read the whole thing, but the professor was a bit of a cuckoo clock and refused to talk about anything that had happened after 1789, when the crime of the Constitution was perpetrated (transforming all the states into residualities, not states at all). So it was pretty easy for him to just assign the reading and test on it. I actually managed to forget all about the reading until about a week before the final, so I read the whole dang thing in about two days. My kids finish their textbooks most of the time, but that’s 'cause I make the rules. No summer until the math book is finished! ---
**Author:** ![footballisplayedwithyourfeet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9f8e36/32.png) [@footballisplayedwithyourfeet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/footballisplayedwithyourfeet)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/9 "2010-08-31T08:38:57Z")
In high school math we had three books that we went through completely in the last two years. At university it has happened a few of times, but most of the time we used between 50 and 80 percent. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/10 "2010-08-31T10:11:04Z")
Only for several Spanish courses (covering Spanish Grammar and Spanish Lit) in primary or secondary education or when the textbook had been published by the Students’ Union at university. But the parts that didn’t get covered weren’t necessarily at the end of the book; they were chapters that were in the national curriculum, but optional, and which for whatever reason our teachers had decided not to cover. For example, the chapters on Optics and Tectonics in 8th Grade Science. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/11 "2010-08-31T12:59:57Z")
Most - but not all - of my programming courses we worked our way through the entire book. The early courses, programming I and II we did. Some of the upper level course like Compiler Theory and Design, we did not get all the way through. ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/12 "2010-08-31T13:20:16Z")
In high school and college, I never had a US history class that went beyond World War 2. When I was in college, in 1990, the US History classes were split into two classes: one covered the period up to the end of the Civil War (1865) and the other covered everything afterward (1865 to Present). I was disappointed because even though the modern US history class started with 1865, the professor still failed to get past WW2. Our textbook covered everything up to the mid-1980s, I think. I don’t understand how a professor can elect to get bogged down in the earlier material at the cost of failing to get into the Civil Rights Movement and Disco. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/13 "2010-08-31T16:35:49Z")
In mathematics it is extremely rare to cover the entire book, and I’m sure the same is true in many subjects for a very specific reason: It is quite rare that the amount of material that is considered required for a subject neatly fits into an exact multiple of terms. Even in 3 term Calculus books, there will be some material that could easily be skipped over and included for completeness, and each instructor makes a choice of what to cover beyond the core. The more side topics you cover in your book, the more likely that someone will choose it to teach their class from because it has all that they want to cover. The only times you will cover the entire book is when there is a heavily standardized curriculum that is firmly entrenched, so that authors will know exactly what to include in their texts. This is definitely not the case in mathematics, especially past Calculus. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/14 "2010-08-31T17:10:31Z")
When I took accounting, the instructor covered a full year accounting text in one semester. I was able to pass the AP exam for accounting and skip the 2nd semester. The instructor was an actual working CPA that the University brought in to teach the course. Vanderbilt didn’t have an accounting major. I think they considered it vocational education. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/15 "2010-08-31T17:52:23Z")
I taught college-level chemistry and physics for several years. I never got through the whole textbook in each course I taught, and I actually chose the textbooks used in my courses. The reason is simple: the authors of the textbooks are writing their books for a variety of courses, ranging from the traditional two-semester course to courses taught in quarters or trimesters. They want their book to appeal to the widest possible audience. Finally, textbook authors like to present an introduction to follow-up courses. For the chemistry course I taught, the textbook I used had 23 chapters, plus three additional chapters available in an optional supplement to the textbook. I only taught through Chapter 19. In fact, in the textbook’s introduction, the authors write: > [@](#): > > …most texts include several chapters on descriptive inorganic chemistry. Here we take a somewhat radical approach. Recognizing the fact that most instructors do not have time to teach much of this material, we have placed most of the classical descriptive chemistry in a supplement entitled Descriptive Chemistry of the Elements. Within the text itself we provide two chapters…that deal with descriptive chemistry. The remaining chapters deal with a detailed study of metal compounds and complex ions, nuclear chemistry, and an introduction to organic chemistry, biochemistry and polymer chemistry. These latter chapters are included to serve as a jumping-off point for students particularly interested in the subject, including those who might be interested in majoring in chemistry or biochemistry. I’ve never seen a first-year course that gets into these topics formally. If a student was taking organic chemistry the following year, it might behoove them to read the last chapter, for example, during their school break. As implied by the author’s introduction, however, they recognize that too many “superfluous” chapters do nothing but add to the size and cost of the textbook, and so they moved three chapters to an optional paperback supplement (which I had a copy of). Note that all of the textbooks I considered for my courses at had more in-depth “superfluous” chapters that I knew I’d never get to, so the books I did use were not unique in this. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/16 "2010-08-31T18:38:07Z")
Another math guy here. I do not recall ever finishing an entire textbook in any of my classes - even the four-term Calculus sequence, which used the same book. Besides not finishing a book, in advanced classes, oftentimes the first couple of chapters will be review material. My professors always skipped this. Still, though, I don’t remember ever starting in, say, Chapter 4, and reaching the end of a book. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/17 "2010-08-31T18:46:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > In fact, in one course, we never even used the textbook. Very expensive textbook too, that was not used the next year, so it had no resale value. :mad: The worst part is that some textbooks nowadays come with a code number that lets you access online exercises, but only for a semester. The prof assigns the online exercises because it’s less work for him, so you _must_ buy a textbook that you otherwise won’t need to open just to get the code. When a new semester rolls around, the textbook publisher doesn’t even have to release a half-hearted new edition, because the code number for the online exercises has expired. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/18 "2010-08-31T19:20:28Z")
First I was going to say “no way”. The it occurred to me that I didn’t really have all that many proper textbooks in college - we mostly read shorter academic books, as I was a social sciences major. Then I remembered [the Human Evolution Coloring Book](http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolution-Coloring-HarperCollins-Childrens/dp/0062737171). As hilarious an idea a coloring book for a university-level course seems, it was actually pretty damned informative. We did indeed finish it. In fact, it somehow seemed tailored perfectly to our class. I wonder how that could have been?! Oh, right, our professor was the author. ---
**Author:** ![congodwarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@congodwarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/congodwarf)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/19 "2010-08-31T20:24:09Z")
> [@Max\_the\_Immortal](#): > > > [@DrDeth](#): > > > > In fact, in one course, we never even used the textbook. Very expensive textbook too, that was not used the next year, so it had no resale value. :mad: > > When a new semester rolls around, the textbook publisher doesn’t even have to release a half-hearted new edition, because the code number for the online exercises has expired. I am going to be majorly pissed if we don’t use our math books. I had to pay over $300 for two 100-level math books and they both have those codes at the back. They also both have DVDs (CDs?). If I just paid that much money for 2 codes, I am going to rethink my plan to fill electives with additional math courses. I’m now understanding why college textbooks may not be covered in full during a semester. Other than my math books, all my textbooks are fairly skinny so I’m assuming they’re more specific. Well, one of my 4 intro to liberal arts books isn’t short. Plato’s Republic is depressingly long looking. Of course it’s all relative. I’d read a 1000 page book for this class if it were a bit more interesting than Republic. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067/20 "2010-08-31T20:28:31Z")
In my psychology classes, I think we pretty much always read the whole textbook. Weren’t many other classes with classic textbooks–usually just sort of a smattering of different books. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-used-a-full-textbook-in-1-semester-school-year/552067.md?page=2)