Last week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared a war
on paper textbooks. "Over the next few years," he said, "textbooks should be out
of use." In their place would come a variety of digital-learning technologies,
like e-readers and multimedia Websites. Such technologies
certainly have their place. But Duncan is threatening to light a fire to a
tried-and-true technology—good old paper—that has been the foundation for one of
the great educational systems on the planet. And while e-readers and multimedia
may seem appealing, the idea of replacing this learning platform with a widely
promoted but still unproven one is extremely dangerous. A
renowned expert on reading, Maryanne Wolf, has recently begun studying the
effects of digital reading on learning, and so far the results are mixed. She
worries that Internet reading, in particular, could be such a source of
distractions for the student that they may cancel out most other potential
benefits of a Web-linked, e-learning environment. And while the high-tech
industry has sponsored substantial amounts of research on the potential benefits
of Web-based learning, not enough time has passed for successive studies to
demonstrate the full effects. In addition, digital-reading
advocates claim that lightweight e-books benefit students’ backs and save
schools money. But the rolling backpack seems to have solved the weight problem,
and the astounding costs to equip every student with an e-reader, provide
technical support and pay for regular software updates promise to make the
e-textbook a very expensive option. My point is that we
shouldn’t jump at a new technology simply because it has advantages; only time
and study will reveal its disadvantages and show the value of what we’ve left
behind, which brings us back to paper. With strength and durability that could
last thousands of years, paper can preserve information without the troubles we
find when our most cherished knowledge is stuck on an unreadable floppy disk or
lost deep in the "cloud." Paper textbooks can be stored and easily referenced on
a shelf. They are easy to read and don’t require a battery or plug. Though the
iPad and e-readers have increasingly better screen clarity, the idea that every
time a person reads a book, newspaper or magazine in the near future they will
require an energy source is frightening. The digitization of
information offers important benefits, but before we tear into pieces the last
of the paper textbooks, let us pause and think more about it. What is the most suitable title for the passage
A. No More Textbooks
B. Here Comes E-reading
C. Textbooks or E-textbooks
D. The Truth About E-reading