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Are e-books an answer?

With the changes made to the Hong Kong local schooling system this year, there has been an outcry from parents about the added burden of the cost of so many new text books. Since this is the first year of the new curriculum, all subjects have produced new textbooks, meaning that there is virtually no chance of parents being able to recycle books from their older children to their younger ones.  All form four students in Hong Kong this year require new books.

As a way of alleviating the criticism this has drawn, there has been talk of the benefits, no doubt in the future, of textbooks which are e-books.  This has been described as a book format which will be downloadable onto an electronic reader.  The argument goes that as the books are electronic, there are fewer costs associated with the printing of the books and upgrades and revisions to the books are easily done through downloads.  However, I think that the idea of e-books for use at school should be approached cautiously.

It is my experience that much of the cost in the production of textbooks does not reside with the printing costs.  The reason why textbooks are so expensive lies in the intellectual property aspect of them – there are significant costs in paying for the writing, developing and organizing of textbooks – printing costs would be a poor second to that.  And whether a book is printed or downloaded electronically, the costs of writing the materials will still exist.  In fact, the costs of writing the materials might even increase since there will need to be graphics and computer experts involved in the production, as well as materials developers.

However, by far the biggest problem with the idea of e-books is the one relating to access and equity.  There are already significant issues about whether poor students are disadvantaged if they don’t have access to an internet computer at home.  With so much school work now requiring the computer, a child from a poor family which does not have a computer or the internet at home, already faces serious disadvantage.  E-books will be yet another gadget parents will be required to buy and this might pose an even greater burden on poor families.

It is also the case that the maintenance and upgrading of an e-book reader will probably be even more expensive than the replacement of a textbook.  And do we really want our children to have yet another expensive gadget in their school bags, something else to be lost or stolen or damaged in the course of a school day?

I don’t doubt that e-books will one day be the standard – not just at schools but in society in general.  However, I don’t think that proposing it as a cost saving measure is accurate.  I think that when e-books are the standard, there will be greater costs associated with them than with buying a book.