Extinct Textbooks and Teaching “Real-time” History

May 12, 2010 by Paul Richlovsky

I once heard about a T-shirt that read, “I like bands that are so cool they don’t even exist yet.”

That makes me think of how certain classes that exclusively cover topical issues–social media marketing–can’t use traditional textbooks: they don’t exist yet.

This brings us to a lengthy Derek Shearer piece in yesterday’s Huffington Post that looks at a “living” history class he just taught on the first year and a half of Obama’s presidency. The post also looks at how a liberal-arts education at Occidental College (where the author is a professor of diplomacy) shaped Obama’s character.

One of of the more notable aspects of the course was a student-created blog that featured reactions to course speakers and other Obama findings.  Granted, I know this isn’t the only example of a course blog done well, but it is a notable example of “new media” playing a central role in one course at a highly respected liberal-arts school. Along with the blog, the course itself also illustrates a viable way to attain knowledge without textbooks or tests: by viewing documentaries, reading news articles, and listening to guest speakers.

In as much as liberal arts education can take heat for being too expensive or removed from post-graduate career realities, I like how it’s hard to argue with the fact that a now-U.S. president learned to read and think critically at a liberal-arts college, and how those skills sprung his further political maturation.

The clincher is that without even intending to, the Obama course at a leading liberal-arts school provides a textbook example of how you don’t need textbooks to learn.

Photo courtesy of Mo Kaiwen via Flickr.