Books? We Don't Need No Stinking Books!

This is my third semester at FIU and my first taking all upper division classes. One thing I have noticed is that those overpriced books we are often forced to buy are frequently unnecessary. In my three semesters here I have taken 10 classes total. Of those 10 classes, two were foreign language (Español uno y dos), two were writing, two are/were history, I’m doing one independent study and the remaining three are/were literature classes.
Now obviously you can’t really have a literature class without books. That would be like playing baseball without the bases (I was going to say without balls but then you would be playing softball—yuk yuk). Same goes for foreign language although you might learn just as much watching Univision. In writing classes books are kind of optional. Yes, you should have a good dictionary and thesaurus, as well as a style manual, but they don’t really count as texts. Some writing professors may want you to read different authors and styles, depending on what kind of writing you will be doing, but a good instructor doesn’t need such crutches.
That brings me to history. Can history be taught without books? I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t think so. But if you answered yes, you would be correct. Last spring I took a class in modern American history and the professor taught the entire class by supplementing his lectures with some internet links to relevant articles and materials. In his syllabus he even stated that he saw no need in asking students to pay ridiculous amounts of money for books when the information can be found with a simple Google search.
This semester I am taking a class on ancient Rome and, although there were two books required for the class as well as one recommended, the professor’s test questions are taken strictly from lectures. We had our first test of the semester last Thursday and there wasn’t a single question on it that I couldn’t find the answer to in my class notes. That is disheartening to think about seeing that this class is one of the few in my educational experience in which I have made it a point to stay current on the assigned reading. Granted, his lectures seem to come directly out of one of the books so doing the reading is very helpful since I take awful notes. But for someone who takes good notes, the books in this class would be entirely unnecessary.
In case anyone is wondering, I got a high B on the test. I’m pretty happy about that taking into account that it was the first test and I really didn’t know what to expect. When another student in the class asked the professor what format his tests were, his reply was, “You’ll find out Thursday.”
I guess my point is that, with a quality professor and the availability of adequate resources, books are unnecessary as an educational tool, depending on the topic of course. Coming into this semester my GPA is 3.955 thanks to an A- in a literature class. Only three of the six courses I have completed thus far have required textbooks. The others have had excellent teachers.