At least once a year one of my college age kids calls, in a panic, because a text book is going to cost them some stupid amount of money. $600 is not unusual for a science book$543 for a ballet text book, $400 for a history book, .
That’s more than my mortgage, people in third world countries live on six hundred dollars a year, put two text books together and you can get a root canal! But that’s what we expect from our collage kids and their families. It’s wrong, absurd….it’s retarded. ( yes, I know I’m not supposed to use that word but I don’t care.)
To add insult to injury the book you pay hundreds of dollars for will probably be uselessly out of date in a year. Then when you try to donate it to your local library they will laugh at you and refuse the ancient and costly artifact. So you’ll give it back to your college kid knowing they will use it as door stop or they’ll just roll joints on the cover for the next year.
Kids are trying to find ways around the text book mafia, they share, they buy used books, they troll the internet as though searching for a mail-order bride. And I just found out about a site called slugbooks.com you can click here to check it out. Maybe they have a solution to this insane and unfair practice.
If we don’t fix this problem kids will take second jobs, like Strip Karaoke to pay for their books. The late hours at the strip club will keep them from getting to class, they’ll flunk out and become professional dancers just because their Into to African American Literature book cost $450 dollars.
But here’s my idea. They should start making textbooks the same way they make comic books. Those are pretty cheap, they are light weight so our children won’t have back problems from carrying them around in their back packs. And kids love reading comic books.
And when the semester is over we should all meet in front of the text book publisher’s office building, set our comic book and laugh at them.