PBA1

On Textbooks

Let’s talk about textbooks. They are boring. They are a dissertation on all of the things you honestly do not care about. They are “text” books, meaning that they are only that: they are books of not images, but only text; not interesting text, but text. Many times, this is all textbooks may provide for the unfortunate reader, for the reader hardly ever actually picks up any information from a textbook, but only reads pages upon pages of text itself, too anxious about finishing as fast as possible to actually pick up and comprehend the information that is being read, because Game of Thrones is on in an hour. Textbooks are never things you read on your own, you read them because you have to.

This issue brings us to talk about the audience of textbooks; who needs to read them? Students. Students of standardized education. Students who are wrung through a system too large and impersonal to deal with them individually, to cater to their own individual needs as educatees; Students who need to get through their college education to get on with their lives. In understanding the audience of text books, we understand why no one wants to read them. Authors and publishers know that people have to read textbooks, regardless of whether or not they enjoy them. So very rarely are these dense bricks ever enriched with engaging rhetoric that allows for some enjoyment in their reading; on occasion, however, they may be sprinkled with white, tasteless bits that are Professors’ and Doctors’ own special deviations of humor, an art in of itself that they lost in their own years of experience of being wrung through such a system that subjects its constituents to the almost unbearable burden that is the mandatory reading of textbooks.

The boringness of textbooks can be justified fairly, however. Textbooks do their job very well; they provide text that makes up information that builds a specific topic, usually from the ground up. Hardly ever is fundamental information particular to the subject left out of a textbook; in the case of the disciplines, textbooks provide most, if not all, of the information possible and necessary for a competent- or even complete, in an ideal world- understanding. It should be understood that readers of textbooks are also expected to be mature; they should not expect humor in a textbook, and should not expect it to be a joyful read. The reader of a textbook must forfeit his own pleasures in order to appeal to the higher purpose that textbooks are a part of: an education, that the reader pursues with the intention of bettering himself, and for the altruistic ones, bettering the lives of others and bettering the world itself. The only ones who will benefit from textbooks are those who are mature enough to accept their responsibility to better mankind in doing their part.

In conclusion, textbooks are boring, are like dissertations, have only information, are not personal at all, and generally soulless. They intend to provide only information for the reader, with the intention of spreading knowledge itself (this is the value in a textbook, it holds knowledge itself). They are used in the context of the most general of educations people can imagine regardless of how high and specific that general education may be. They have the style of a dissertation and no tone at all; once again, they only give information. The audience member must be mature in order to benefit from the reading of a textbook. The audience member, in most if not all cases, is a student, who has to get through them. Very rarely will you find someone crazy enough to pick up a textbook on their own accord.