What if we didn’t have textbooks??

Since the 19th century, textbooks have been the go-to study guide for a student. They are basically a compilation of well-researched content curated by renowned authors and scientists.

Moreover, textbooks have been in circulation since ancient civilizations. From Ancient Greeks inscribing educational texts on multiple letters to the Buddhist preaching wisdom via the first book to be ever written — The Diamond Sutra, textbooks have always been playing a prominent role in our history.

Even today’s e-learning content material like videos, story cards, images, ppts and more are nothing but derivatives of the textbooks. Every concept that students learn in a new, engaging format is either adapted or inspired by standardized reference books.

The extent of far-reaching applications of textbooks is more than one can comprehend. So, what would happen if textbooks didn’t exist? Will we have easy access to information just like we’ve today? Will we be able to document all the prominent historical events? Let us explain how the world would look like if textbooks never existed.

Uniformed Instruction

Today, if you scan through the book of a 10th standard CBSE student, you’ll find that every learner is studying the same concept. This applies to every other grade of any board. The primary reason being that all the information and instruction is standardized. A well set syllabus is already in place.

If textbooks didn’t exist, every student would have been taught different concepts. There would be no alignment or a standardized instruction across corresponding standards and boards. Many times, there might be instances where every division would have a different understanding of all the topics. As a result, there would be no uniformity, eventually resulting in chaos and imbalance in the education ecosystem.

If we shift the same periscope to the entire world, the consequences could be worrisome. Every student would’ve different knowledge on topics and eventually the entire study system would collapse because of unbalanced curriculum coverage and unawareness.

No Historical Documentation

Historical documentation denotes the valor of soldiers, resilience of medical officers, persistence of scientists and many more ground-breaking events. This information plays a much significant role in our lives.

By learning from the past, we can make more informed decisions in the present and therefore change our future for the better. If textbooks didn’t exist, all our ancestral struggle would’ve gone in vain. There would be no learning curve and all the same age-old struggle would’ve existed in this era too.

Similarly, if children today want to develop their own scientific hypothesis, they’ve all the past information of success and failures at their disposal. Every piece of content is curated under a specific book so that learners don’t need to scan through irrelevant information.

Without textbooks, every experiment or hypothesis would take 5x more time than what we can achieve currently. Imagine living in a world where all of us are absolutely unaware of our past.

No Means of Communication

Every language that we speak today has been written by our ancestors in textbooks. Take the English language for example. Today it’s one of the most common languages spoken across the world. If you visit any city or country, you’ll have a common language to interact with the locals. Even though at times there might be some language barrier, it’s still 10x better than not having any information because of the absence of books.

If textbooks really didn’t exist, we would have no idea about grammar, sentence constructions, verbs, nouns, adverbs and so on. Basically, no language would exist. We would be living in a modern era with communication skills equivalent to stone age people. This is probably one of the biggest setbacks that we would’ve to deal with.

Summing up, the role of textbooks in our lives is quite significant. We don’t realize it but the far-reaching implications of textbooks can be witnessed in every walk of life. So, after this, the next time whenever you open a textbook, you’ll surely have an insight and a better understanding of how valuable the textbook truly is.