Or, “Why I Hate McDougal Litell.”

I’m not a huge fan of textbooks. Sure, it makes my life easier when I want to assign students something to read for homework – but I’m pretty convinced that they don’t contribute very much to student learning.

If I didn’t have a textbook to work with, I’d push a little harder to develop more of my own resources. I’m sure I’d do just fine and that my students might actually learn what I want them to learn – instead of skimming through the textbook and reading without comprehending much at all.

Nonetheless, we use textbooks. Our textbook – The Americans, by McDougal Litell – came with a resource pack. Included in this was a CD, titled “Easy Planner,” which contained an electronic copy of the resources included in the resource pack.

I moved in October, and I still haven’t quite unpacked everything. Those source books are still hidden away somewhere – because I never use them. I have, however, used the CD in the past, because there are a few resources that I like (primary documents, literature sources, etc).

Tomorrow, I planned on reading an excerpt from Burr, by Gore Vidal. The excerpt, which features Aaron Burr describing through a flashback his infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton, is in the resource book. I whipped out the electronic version (which I admittedly still had to dig through some unpacked boxes for) and navigated to where I thought the excerpt would be.

What did I encounter? A wonderful message from McDougal Litell:

McDougal Litell was unable to obtain permission to display this document electronically. Please refer to your printed resource book.

Arg!!!

You mean I dug through boxes to find a CD that, ultimately, was useless to me? Thankfully I was able to locate the printed book after I dug through several other boxes. Otherwise I’d be looking through my complete copy of Burr and typing up the excerpt myself.

/sigh. Why bother with the electronic resources if it’s not going to be complete? Or is it just my luck that I picked the only resource in the package that wasn’t available electronically?

On a side note, the book is awesome. I wish I had time to get my students to read the whole thing. Burr, like all of Gore Vidal’s novels, does a great job of bringing historical characters and periods to life. Burr in particular gave me a new appreciation for some of the early characters in American history that previously seemed lifeless and empty.