As anyone who has been to school knows, textbooks are always a matter of some interest.
In some countries, the book is issued by the government, and there is no other medium of teaching for any subject. Although, if teachers feel particularly brave, they can bring their own mass of photocopies, which they would probably have to make, as well. In these systems, the students burn the book at the end of the year, because it is a symbol of all that is wrong in their education system: the existence of a single publication means the issuing body often sees no need to compete and produce the best publication, leaving the students with their mouths wide open and yawning, and the message, lost in the nebula of pernickety sentences that don’t really make sense, but are somehow still included in the book.
Other systems are different; in some, there is no approved book at all: at the end of each year, each teacher receives a load of new books, and from these, he or she must pick the one they wish to teach from, which is then communicated to the students. In those cases, the reactions of both students and parents are known: the former groan because they already know what it will feel like to be carrying five or six of these to school every day. The latter groan because purchasing these heavy items will lighten their wallets considerably. In some countries, the financial burden of buying those excellent books can easily come up to $500 (350 EUR) per SEMESTER. This is not to say that textbooks are not worth the money; some are excellent publications, and probably worth more than their actual price. They are just expensive

And yet both of these are reprehensible extremes; if education, and training, is a public good, then it must be possible for individuals to have access to quality materials easily, straightforwardly, and at a relatively affordable price.

And isn’t it just lucky that, while on the subject of books, we can report that the new ECo-C training works are now being published in German? The Dec. 10^th meeting was also the unveiling of t. 1 of the new Communication & Self-marketing companion work that matches curriculum 1.2z, with the Team Work and Conflict Management volume to follow in another month. From what we can tell, those particular books have been coordinated with significant attention paid to the slightest detail. Not only were they overseen by an expert, Dr. Silvia Wolf, a member of the IPKeurope advisory board, but they were illustrated by Austrian painter Erwin Kastner, and published in a 208p edition hardcover.

Their price has yet to be announced, as it happens, but we at ECo-C.eu believe there is a silver lining here: to the extent where these books were created by the ECo-C’s governing authority, which is IPKeurope, they will not suffer from the critical flaw of quality textbooks, which is an overabundance of competitive writers, who between them manage to issue new, slightly-updated versions of crucial textbooks per semester. In the end, a quality publication that does cost an arm and a leg and is good for a few years is the dream of any faithful student, and we, who are interested in as fluid a science as communications, should rejoice: we are all, at heart, students.