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May 31, 2016

Are Books Pertinent?


















This holiday weekend, I spent a considerable amount of time organizing our children’s books. We have five children, ages four to thirty; and we have early reader books to high school novels. By my estimate, we have over two hundred children’s books.

As an educator, and even as a parent, I am always trying to use the tools of the day, the latest software and hardware, social media (full disclosure, I hate Twitter), and the newest technological approaches to life and learning. So as I organized the books, I wondered, are books still pertinent?

Last week, I worked with a district to begin the process of writing their English, mathematics, science, and social studies curricula. Each core had to adopt new text source materials. And similar to my parent quandary regarding books, the curriculum committees struggled with the same concerns. They wondered if they should purchase textbooks or if they should go with online access.

We now live in Florida with our school-aged children. I was concerned at first because I heard rumors of Flori’duh.’ However, that has not been our experience. We love our children’s schools. They are filled with caring educators and have well-organized curricula and instruction. Plus, my daughter does not carry home heavy textbooks. Every night she logs into stimulating websites where she can communicate directly with her instructor, complete assignments, watch videos, and receive immediate assistance if she does not understand a concept. The new online texts and systems really transform the relationship between home and school.

In the end, the curriculum committees decided to buy online texts for all their students, but they also purchased a class set of texts. The reason for this is that school networks are not foolproof. They are often down or very slow. And not every student has online access at home. By purchasing one class set (plus a couple extra) students can be assured access to the text in class (without worrying about the network), and also have a few texts to give to students that do not have online access at home.

In my home, I am still not sure about books. I was a professional organizer at one time. According to professional organizer associations, unless you read the book recently, the book should be donated and not take space and collect dust in your home. However, I thought about what the books could mean to our children. If our young children see a lot of books, then they know that we value reading. That was a good enough reason to keep them. Yes, they could read the book online, but there is something wonderful about having the boys seated on either side as we read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, or Oh, the Places You’ll Go! or the Berenstain Bears.


What do you think? Are books still pertinent? Tell us what you think in the comments below.



Victoria Pagonis
Founder and President
Standards Solution