Polish Government To Deliver Free Textbooks For All Kids Grades 4-6

rekrutacja writes "Today the Polish government started a Digital School pilot program, which includes distributing e-textbooks. This came after a years-long effort by the Open Education Coalition and its members to persuade policy makers, that Open Educational Resources are the future of education. The last few months have been especially eventful, as the free textbooks part of the program was dropped by the Ministry of Education and reinstated again by the Prime Minister Office."

Re:Yeah

[excelsior_gr]

If you think that free textbooks for kids is what bankrupted Greece then you are being naive. This has been standard practice even before Greece joined the EU and is a direct follow-up of the Greek constitution. Oh, and you might want to look up on how this systems works in Greece before posting further comments.

For the record, I agree with you on taxes and spending. You just have to apply this concept to sections of the budget like "military spending" and "Olympics 2004". And don't get me started on corruption, bad management and the like...

Re:Lulz at Slashdot

[Ihmhi]

Agreed... I think very few things actually change in the specific fields represented in the K-12 curriculum. As far as I can see, the only potential changes are (some) of the following:

• * A new, easier-to-learn methodology to run through a particular type of mathematics.
• * A significant, confirmed change in history, or perhaps removal of the bias already existing in history texts (such as the fact that Paul Revere was one of three riders and actually quite lazy - history class should teach history, not legends).
• * Changes to grammatical rules (the whole "Lists and a comma before 'and' thing" - for example: it used to be "Jim, John, and Lisa" but apparently it is now supposed to be "Jim, John and Lisa" for... some reason. I think it's idiotic as the first one better represents how one would actually say the sentence, though.)
• * Changes to specific tools in the curriculum. For instance, drafting isn't taught much in high school anymore, but AutoCAD is. Cursive is often being dropped in favor of typing. You rarely will see a shop class using a hand drill over a power drill. etc.
• * New requirements for education that add new subjects to the curriculum, although what currently exists is pretty well-rounded.

I think you could take a full set of school books from 20 years ago and they'd be almost identical to the ones used today.

Re:Yeah

[Tsingi]

Of course someone had to pay for them.

You think that providing an education for your citizenry is a burden on society?

Do you think it would it be more efficient to spend the money on prisons and welfare?