The expertise of an average teacher is low, whether with textbooks or without them. For example, many math teachers at elementary schools fail at elementary school math. I have heard horror stories.
Without textbooks, it wouldn't be any better. Only the kids wouldn't have a secondary source of information.
I am completely in favor of having better teachers. I just don't see the way to find them, and people were already trying for decades, so whatever idea I would come up with, someone probably already tried it. (I know a few people who are working on a reform of mathematical education. It is from them that I know how the actual sitation is even worse than I imagined.)
> A video of a good (even great) teacher is no more interactive than a textbook
Agreed. Sometimes the video can contain helpful animations.
My hope is that the videos could be updated more flexibly than the books. When you print a book, the next version comes in a decade. There are known errors in textbooks, but no one is going to spend money to reprint them again, just to fix the errors. It we could have the books online, we could fix the errors as they are found... but most people are not going to read books online. However, with videos hosted online, I hope it would be possibly to, dunno, add the errata as subtitles, or something.
Another hope is greater fragmentation. A teacher is unlikely to recommend one chapter from one textbook, and another chapter from another textbook. Or recommend two textbooks, like "if you didn't understand the explanation in the first one, try the second one". With videos -- here I assume there would be a free version online -- this could be easier.
I have seen many videos recorded by teachers during COVID. Some of them quite ok, considering the authors are amateurs. But the thing I like most is that if you have five teachers that teach the same grade, and make the videos for the whole year, you get five alternative videos for each topic. Now when anyone says "I don't get it", you can easily give them four more links and maybe that will help.
Elementary school education is an area where you really need to think about how your solutions scale. If you do the right thing once, literally millions can benefit from it.
Without textbooks, it wouldn't be any better. Only the kids wouldn't have a secondary source of information.
I am completely in favor of having better teachers. I just don't see the way to find them, and people were already trying for decades, so whatever idea I would come up with, someone probably already tried it. (I know a few people who are working on a reform of mathematical education. It is from them that I know how the actual sitation is even worse than I imagined.)
> A video of a good (even great) teacher is no more interactive than a textbook
Agreed. Sometimes the video can contain helpful animations.
My hope is that the videos could be updated more flexibly than the books. When you print a book, the next version comes in a decade. There are known errors in textbooks, but no one is going to spend money to reprint them again, just to fix the errors. It we could have the books online, we could fix the errors as they are found... but most people are not going to read books online. However, with videos hosted online, I hope it would be possibly to, dunno, add the errata as subtitles, or something.
Another hope is greater fragmentation. A teacher is unlikely to recommend one chapter from one textbook, and another chapter from another textbook. Or recommend two textbooks, like "if you didn't understand the explanation in the first one, try the second one". With videos -- here I assume there would be a free version online -- this could be easier.
I have seen many videos recorded by teachers during COVID. Some of them quite ok, considering the authors are amateurs. But the thing I like most is that if you have five teachers that teach the same grade, and make the videos for the whole year, you get five alternative videos for each topic. Now when anyone says "I don't get it", you can easily give them four more links and maybe that will help.
Elementary school education is an area where you really need to think about how your solutions scale. If you do the right thing once, literally millions can benefit from it.