M

y fellow teachers often ask me why I have no textbook for teaching my 10th grade class. Actually, I do have some good textbooks at home. I simply don'€™t bring any into our classes.

Here are the reasons.

Most English textbooks are notoriously impersonal. How can I allow my class to enjoy humane learning '€œchoice and voice'€ if I let myself be dictated by a textbook author who knows nothing about my students?

Does the author know what my students want to read, listen, write and talk about? Nope. My students are not a group of learning robots.

They are flesh-and-blood human beings with different preferences, interests and language proficiencies.

What students learn from a textbook has often gone through over simplification and unnecessary filtering.

School textbooks deprive our kids of experiencing the language in use and the reality of life, while the Internet and non-textbook materials provide ample choices of authentic language and content.

Most issues in listening and reading texts are presented from one perspective only.

In my class, students are encouraged to bring some reading texts of the same topic yet in various perspectives. This helps my students advance beyond their narrow-mindedness and practice seeing one issue from different angles, a crucial life skill to be a part of civilized society.  I am a blessed teacher with amazing freedom to choose what and how to teach my students.

We have a lot of negotiations in class on what and how to learn, something almost impossible to do if my students and I are a slave to a textbook.

Thanks to the principals who allow us to enjoy such a luxury.

Have you ever seen a teacher who has been using exactly the same textbook for decades? How boring! Certainly not me. I love to see my students bring various topics of reading texts into our silent reading session.

I am eager to learn new things from them, new words and ideas such as '€œplatonic love'€, '€œthe butterfly effect'€ and '€œhow to spot a liar'€. I have learnt a lot from them, some ideas that never came across my mind.

Language and time happen to be very tight with one another. School textbooks are obsolete once they are published. Will you let your kids digest rotten food for thought? No way!

Anyway, why should we ask our students to pay for something abundantly available for free out there?