Those have been in use for a while and have their own issues (taking up space in crowded hallways, trip hazard, not great on uneven surfaces, etc).
We really need to not expect kids to use such heavy, durable books in the first place, but anything related to schools is automatically tricky to deal with.
Again, at least around my neck of the woods, physical textbooks have pretty much bit the dust, which is fine by me.
But one thing that’s really annoyed me as the Firebug has gone through school is the absence of any PDF or online equivalent. Not being able to access any textbook equivalent has made it more challenging to help him learn the material. Whether it’s helping him learn to solve an algebra equation or talk with him about what was going on in the U.S. in the 1850s, having a clear idea of what was being covered would have been a big help.
I used that book also, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t have to bring it to school. What a great book - especially the first, Morrison, volume. My only issue with it was that I wanted to read ahead, it being so involving.
I’ve read many thousands of books, obsessively, but I’m always stumped by the standard question, “what book changed your life?” But now that I think about it, Morison and Commager changed my life. Not immediately, but in two ways over the long term. The demolishing of the grade-school American hagiography for a view that was more in tune to 1968 and later. And a love for history itself, which turned into a bottomless well I could always dive into and be refreshed.
Evidence that lockers really exist
So I asked my girlfriend about this, who is an architect who works for a design firm that specializes in new public school design (K-12) and renovations of existing public schools here in New England.
She says that while some school districts still insist on having lockers, the trend is definitely going against having them. For one thing, they are extremely expensive, for the lockers themselves and the wider corridors necessary to install them. (The cost per square foot to build a modern school is astronomical.)
But the main reason is that students don’t typically need them for textbooks any more as schools have largely moved to digital learning platforms and online access to educational materials.
I asked about sports equipment and she says students just store their gear (like field hockey sticks) in or near the gym. For everything else students simply carry around backpacks like college students typically do.
Because it’s too stupid to be real, is that it?
Ahem. Yeah, I just wonder about the phrasing of the question. The people asking must have seen “this prom thing” in more than one movie, more than one TV show, read about it in more than one book. But they don’t ask, “What’s it like, have you been, is it really that big a deal?” First they have to establish that it has basis in truth. Do they really think Prom could be ubiquitous in fiction, yet not happen IRL? It’s not sparkly vampires. Why wouldn’t it be real?
Anyway, Merry Christmas, everybody!
I mean, that’s pretty much the same for the original question of the thread. No, lockers are entirely fictional!
Ya beat me to it !! I grew up in the US, in Pennsylvania. Rainy/ Snowy days? Please. Where was I going to PUT all of that wet crap during the day??
In Elementary school ( K- 6 ) no lockers. One classroom for all core stuff, out into other rooms for gym, art, music, etc.
Jr. High ( 7-9 ), metal lockers. Full height. Ditto for H.S. ( 10-12 )
I had a backpack or book bag of some type. Tons of textbooks to manage, plus accessories.
I’m aware that one could exist in higher grades solely with:
Tablet
LiIon battery backups/ chargers for tablet
Cell Phone.
It’d be a different experience but I do embrace that shift from heavy and costly textbooks to e-books where possible.
The. IPad I’m typing this on currently stores a few books. It weighs nothing. I’m old, and still LIKE to carry a book around for the pleasure of it. But in terms of educational models and efficiency? Tablets. Or cheaper laptops. Whichever.
Asking if the Senior Prom is real?!? Next, they’ll be asking if the Junior Ring Dance was real*.
*Don’t know about the present, but it was very much a real thing when I was a HS junior. I’ve got the pics to prove it.
So does anyone know if Teh Internets have changed this? I recall the scam that was college text books, and you were pretty well beholden to the school bookstore. I wonder if it’s now possible to save money by getting books online? How is it different today (assuming it is)?
This is from about 10 years ago - but I’m sure it hasn’t gotten better. When my kids were in college they could rent physical or e textbooks from Amazon (probably only digital now) It was a little less expensive than buying the latest edition and selling it back at the end of the semester but more expensive than buying the 9th edition after the 10th has been released ( which was common way back when).
Although even 40 years ago I wasn’t beholden to the college bookstore - I rarely bought my books there. But I attended an urban commuter college , so there were at least 4 independent bookstores off the campus where I could buy textbooks.
My daughter is in college and one of the few positive surprises has been that we have so far paid zero for textbooks and in fact the “bookstore” has only a tiny book section, and most of that is devoted to paperbacks of what seems to be English Literature books. There do not seem to be math, physics, accounting, etc. textbooks at all.
This is a big, well regarded, land grant university.
At UW-Platteville (at least when I wen mumbty years ago) textbook rental was included, so I bought 0 textbooks (though you could buy them if you wanted)
For themodynamics we had a textbook and then later the prof’s textbook was released so we had two (IIRC could use either for tests – mostly to look up steam tables)
Brian
Where I have been teaching textbooks and reference books has changed dramatically. For both good and bad.
Our university library seems to cut deals with many publishers for online access to current books. Enrolled students get access via their university login for those subjects. Mostly this works pretty well, although for some subjects there are controls on what can be accessed. The ability to print via a PDF download may be prohibited or limited in the number of pages.
Being rather traditional in a desire to have a bound printed copy I purchased some of these for myself. The price variation was staggering. US editions were always significantly more expensive, and often there were “international” editions at a fraction of the price. Some books clearly become available on an annual cycle, and may be unobtainable or only available at prices that make no sense. Another trick seems to be unbound (but perforated for use in a binder) versions at a discount. The actual printed copy appears identical to what would be bound. Texts or references of arguably similar quality can have 5:1 or greater variation in price.
Some authors very much focused on providing the best teaching material and make the books available online for free, teaching materials - like slides and source code for slides and exercises are also available to all. Actually buying the printed book is not expensive either. (Andrew Tannenbaum is worthy of note for this approach.)
Historically there have been authors of well regarded textbooks that have become quite wealthy. Some subjects are difficult to write good texts for and creating something really good worthy of reward. But there altogether too many who appear to be only in it for the money.
I suspect there is a lot happening under the covers I’m not privy to. I have friends who used to work in the book trade, and prior to Amazon they describe an unstructured anarchic mess of competing interests and a lot of incompetence. Not sure where we are now. It doesn’t seem that much different.
Depends on where you are. Illinois had an independent college bookstore and a private bookstore also which carried all the textbooks. At MIT you were stuck with the Coop. What saved me was that just about all my EE and CS professors were writing a textbook, so we got to buy Xeroxed versions of it at the EE supply desk. A lot cheaper than a published text at least.
There are more examples of knowing nothing about Lima. At least in Glee they pronounced it correctly (like lima beans). In the 1999 movie The Thomas Crown Affair, someone pronounces Lima, Ohio as it’s pronounced for Lima, Peru. I just watched a portion of the March 20th episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! called “The Rabbit Hole with Jimmy Kimmel” in which he pronounces as for Lima, Peru.
There’s a few textbooks from ancient times that are still in print - Beer and Johnston (Statics and Dynamics). Word on campus was that Beer (who was the department head) had already made a fortune on the book, which was first printed in 1962. Grey and Meyer (Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits), now in 6th edition (we used the first edition in school). I have never met a fellow analog IC designer who didn’t own a copy. Samuelson (Economics) - in print since 1948.
The money can be hard to come by. I knew someone who was invited to write a fairly specialized electrical engineering textbook back in the 80s. He estimated that he made about $2/hour in the end.
I spoke to my niece about that a few months ago - yeah, not so many textbooks, so no lockers (coatracks, I guess, for outer clothing, or the students lug their coats from class to class? Didn’t occur to me to ask)
My father brought home wooden lockers from the post office (which I guess was refurbishing) in the 1970s and turned them into a toyshelf for me and my little brother.
I used a leather bookstrap for a while in the 1970s (which had a heavy metal buckle on the end - probably wouldn’t be allowed to carry that into school any more. It was obviously dangerous). I don’t know why I didn’t get a backpack - they just weren’t standard equipment for that time and place, I guess