Instead of carrying several tons of textbooks around. Books that only paraphrase a topic written by a supposed expert or maybe just an underpaid grad student. Why not use the seminal books in the topic? Perhaps the whole book is too long, but certain chapters are likely to be much better than any hack job an textbook author could generate. Within my field there are very significant books and authors whom everyone reads. I’m just assuming this fact on other industries.
What better way to teach than introduce the source of an aspect? Reading a textbook is like getting a written transcript of radio announcer vs seeing the actual ball game. Which would you rather experience?
Perhaps the students who are interested will read more than the minimum. Whereas the textbook only contains the minimum and may not even reference the important works in the field.
We already do this for one subject. English. We require students to read supposedly seminal works in English literature. This practice, refined a bit, could be brought to other fields. Why is there a difference anyway?
How awful would it be to experience Flowers for Algernon as a Cliff Notes vs the actual book? Yet this is what we do in teaching the sciences, computers, etc.
People want to debate Darwin in school, which would be incredibly time consuming and foolish. But what if we did. Kids read actual Darwin and actual ID. Not the commentary. The evidence. This is what settled the Dover trial a few years ago.
There is passion, love, humor in the technical books I read. In textbooks, nothing. What a horrible message to send prospective engineers and scientists.