Slashdot Mirror
University of Minnesota Launches Review Project For Open Textbooks
New submitter Durinia writes "Minnesota Public Radio is running a story about the University of Minnesota's Open Textbooks project. The goal of the project is to solicit reviews of college-level open source textbooks and collect those that pass muster onto their website.
The project will focus first on high-volume introductory classes such as those for Math and Biology, because as David Ernst, director of the project, states in the interview: 'You know the world doesn't need another $150 Algebra One book. Algebra One hasn't changed for centuries, probably.'"
Requirements for inclusion include: Open licensing (Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike), complete content (no glorified collections of lecture notes), applicability outside of the author's institution, and print availability.
Math textbooks are basically just a listing of basic proofs.
It sounds like you were educated in the 60s - 70s, because that is what textbooks were at the time. No decent math textbook today just lists basic proofs. That would be a reference book, intended for someone who already knew the math and needed to look-up the steps. A good textbook is more explanatory, breaks out the steps, includes historical anecdotes, footnotes, examples of applications, etc. Since the 60s we have learned that drilling proofs into people's mind is not the optimal way to teach math.
Not that education or textbooks today are perfect, but there have been advances.