I have little doubt that a group of people well educated in any given subject can do better than the average high-school text book. They're often riddled, not just with mistakes, but fundamentally wrong lessons. First year university physics courses often review a substantial amount of high-school material to correct fundamental mistakes in students understanding of the basics.

I think the problem lies with the notion that people who teach physics are more qualified to write a text-book than people who do physics. The result is a pretty text-book that uses all the latest teaching tricks, but teaches things that are wrong.

I'd like to see text-book companies moderate some kind of collaboration between teachers and do'ers to produce a book that is both correct in its content and easy for students to learn from. In a sense, first year physics profs can also be viewed as the ultimate consumers of minds educated by high-school texts. They have a good idea of what students need to learn in high-school to be well grounded in their subject area for their first year of university. Instead, we design text-books to help students perform well in standardized tests that frequently prioritize the wrong things and make the same mistakes as text-book writers.

I have a U.S. history textbook that starts off every chapter by listing the California standard that will be covered.

It's pretty lame, but the good teachers are totally capable of making sure they cover the standards that people seem to value so much, while still teaching they're own unique experience or style. It just sucks because first year teachers are handed the bare curriculum/standards/readings and don't realize how much freedom they have to make it way better.

>I have little doubt that a group of people well educated in any given subject can do better than the average high-school text book. //

I don't understand this comment. The only person I know that's involved in creating high-school textbooks (UK) is certified by the subjects professional body and has 40 years experience teaching their subject; as well of course as a Uni education in the subject.

People writing textbooks are surely (paraphrasing) 'groups of people well educated in the given subject' with years of experience teaching the material? If not, what on Earth are they doing writing textbooks?

Also why don't States just buy in the whole syllabus and materials that other States have developed and save their time and money - it's not like Physics or Mathematics or whatever is a different subject according to the State you live in.

> First year university physics courses often review a substantial amount of high-school material to correct fundamental mistakes in students understanding of the basics.

Partly this is because physics is hard and people use analogy or simplified models. These are fine for high-school understanding, but more advanced students need correct understanding.

How do the kids cope with the book being online? Last year my wife, who's a Biology/Chemistry teacher ran out of books. Cause the kids take them, never bring them back and the school doesn't enforce any kind of book return policy. Anyways, she ran out of physical books to give her kids and tried to get them to use an online version of the books. Magically 90% of the students had no internet access. Mind you these are kids with iPhones and Android smartphones. The book was pdf and was accessible through any web browser. The kids ended up complaining and the school ended up finding the money to buy new books.

Lazy kids have the power to change a lot :)

I think kids are supposed to print out the relevant chapter before a lesson. It's probably a waste of paper, but at least the teacher can make sure everyone has the reading in class.

I've never actually seen a digital learning experience, whether it's a textbook or online lesson or whatever else, work. Things like the Khan Academy are great but you have to be motivated to use them. It's too easy for people to blame their inability to focus on the technology being hard to use.

I'm reading it now, and this is a great little book.

I particularly like how many of the illustrations and examples came from students (presumably course projects of some sort) in earlier iterations of the course.

Yeah I think one of the assignments at the end of the year is to take a photo demonstrating some physics property. There is some really cool photos that come out of it, and he puts the best in the book.

my general relativity prof in grad school used our class to beta test his new textbook-in-progress. it was nice because we got free photocopies of each chapter, and in return were expected to point out mistakes etc.