On textbooks

"Suppose you put all geography teachers in a heap, and pull out all those who are teaching it as a second subject. Then pull out all those who are running the school play and the Second XI and haven't a lot of spare time for original thought  thought and for assembling their own resources. Pull out those who are a little more lazy than they ought to be. Pull out from the heap those who are experimenting widely and deeply with two or three classes, and find that they need something to fall back on with other classes. Pull out also those in their first or second year of teaching. If you pull out all those, you're left with a body of experienced and knowledge able and enthusiastic teachers who can quite probably get on without a textbook. But they will be a small minority, and most teachers, for most of their teaching, need some help of the kind that a textbook can supply. And the durability and availability of a textbook, as well as the wide choice of books, makes me think that the text book can't be beaten."

Ernest W (Bill) Young

Author of the classic 'A Course in World Geography' with J. H. Lowry (which I used when at school)

From an interview with the late David R Wright
Young, E. W., and David R. Wright. “Authors and Their Books: ‘A Walking-Stick, Not a Crutch.’” Teaching Geography, vol. 2, no. 4, 1977, pp. 173–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23750488. Accessed 9 June 2020