The backbone of our modern education system is the collection of aging textbooks used to teach children about the health benefits of asbestos, the current state of Yugoslavia, and whether we can trust this young upstart Truman. When you're a kid, you believe the authoritative font of these overpriced manuals more than the words of the teachers themselves -- if something is printed in a textbook, it's automatically true.
Unfortunately, some of those things are really, really stupid. Here are six terrible modern textbooks that have all the seriousness and accuracy of a Wikipedia page edited by 4chan trolls:
6
An Art Textbook Has Blank Spaces Where The Pictures Should Go
Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800
Art textbooks are some of the most valued educational tools for young students, since all those images of old paintings and sculptures often provide kids with their first glimpse of dongs, boobies, or even the enigmatic mons pubis. So imagine the disappointment some innocent, virginal college freshmen in Canada felt upon opening a $180 (Canadian) art textbook to find that it looked like an incomplete sticker album:
Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800
They were underwhelmed by the newest art movement: post-visualism.
The picture-less textbook isn't the avant-garde brainchild of some enterprising textbook author, since, as usual, imagination and education just don't mix. The book, titled Global Visual And Material Culture: Prehistory To 1800, is lacking in visuals for a far more pragmatic reason: money. According to the publishers, if they secured the rights for all the images they wished to use, the book would've cost around $630. Which is pretty bad, considering that not only is the textbook mandatory for students at the Ontario College Of Art And Design, it's also used for only one semester. It essentially turns into glossy toilet paper after that.
So, the publisher decided that, instead of pictures, they'd just include a box with instructions on where to find a copy of the particular image on the Internet; as if young college students needed any more practice hunting for uncensored images online. We say they should have gone for the more practical solution and filled the blank spaces with quick MS Paint re-creations of each painting, or perhaps a short written description.
Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800
"It's some lady smiling, but her smile is, like, super mysterious.
And there's a hidden UFO, my friend says."
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