"Learning" Textbooks vs "Reference" Textbooks
One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the fact that there are two main types of textbooks. There are reference textbooks, which are for people who are already versed in the subject area, typically academic researchers, professors, and the like. They tend to be large, contain massive amounts of information, and be unintelligible to everyone but their target audience. Then, there are expository textbooks, which are for people who actually want to learn things (aka me, a confused undergraduate student).
In some upper year courses (looking at you, cryptography), the recommended textbook is actually a reference textbook and is therefore completely unreadable, and the professors sometimes don’t realize this because they’re already experts in that area. The textbook for my cryptography class isn’t useless, but it’s very terse and low on details (and I have no way of filling in those details, because I don’t actually know what’s going on.)
My solution to this lately has just been to acquire alternative textbooks from the university library, with very mixed results. Every author has their own vision of whatever topic, will teach it in their own way, and will sometimes use very strange notation. I kinda go through a trial period with each textbook: can I read it? Does it cover most of my course material (or, if not for a specific course, the things I need to know)? How expository is it? (If I’m new to the area, more exposition tends to be better). How much background knowledge is assumed by this textbook? And so on.
I am starting to realize that every textbook author sort of has their own ideal reader in mind that they’re writing for, and different ideal readers require different approaches. Which I should have guessed, since I’m a writer myself, but it’s really only fully sinking in now.
As a side note, I feel like the disparity between a textbook being somewhat readable and a textbook being impossible to read is at its strongest in math. Most textbooks that cover abstract mathematics are completely unreadable to those without a background in abstract math, which makes me feel like in a lot of cases trying to learn math from a book is this sort of weird hazing ritual.
Anyway, there are a concerning number of textbooks in my room now. I don’t know, I guess, trying to find good reference materials kinda feels like dating to some extent, so I just need to try out like, five textbooks, and then I never return any of them so they’re all still here.
And maybe profs should put more effort into picking recommended textbooks for their courses that are appropriate for the level of the students. Sure, most students won’t ever consult the textbook. But what about those who will?