The Fall semester doesn't start for nearly five months and I received the dreaded "Order Your Textbooks for Fall or Else" paperwork from the campus bookstore. Pikcing texts isn't a problem for two of my classes. I'm really struggling with a text for my Rhetorical Theory course, though. The choices stand at three: Rhetoric and Human Consciousness, Rhetorical Theory: An Introduction or The Rhetoric of Western Thought. None of the texts strike me as particularly remarkable. Rhetoric and Human Consciousness and The Rhetoric of Western Thought--both move forward in a chronological order--offer extremely detailed discussions of various approaches the rhetoric and the theorists related to that approach. The problem is that both texts read like an encyclopedia moving from one theorist to the next without linking the theorists together in a broader sense. Rhetorical Theory: An Introduction works from the opposite direction: lots of broad discussion of approaches to rhetoric and passing references to theorists (bonus points for taking a non-chronological approach, too).
All things considered, the Rhetorical Theory text makes more sense for the class; I'm teaching topics rather than history, per se. The problem is that the text is $73, a ridiculous amount for a 328 page undergraduate textbook. Add this text with two other books for the course--The Rhetoric of Rhetoric and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--and the $100 threshold is a thing of the past. Ouch. That's a lot of cash for one class, even an upper division theory course. The first two texts I mentioned sell for $40-50.
Do I go for a cheaper, $40-50 text that doesn't work as well with the course but could do the trick or, cost be damned, go for broke? I know the money isn't an issue for a lot of the students at my school but there are some who struggle to make ends meet. I would have blown a gasket at $100 for a single course back in the day. Multiple, and reliable, used bookstores across the internets carry all three texts I'd like to use; the savvy student could procure all three for $50-70.
3 comments:
Get the text you can use the best, regardless of the cost.
Also had very strange dream where Mom was hooking up with Gene x_X
Zen - Great book. I re-read it every few years.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for demonstrating that at least ONE professor is concerned about his students' financial situations. It's refreshing beyond words to hear.
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