Mine is nowhere near that impressive, but still a bit dismaying considering that I teach a core area, and a tested subject area...

Our American Government textbooks are from the mid-nineties. They list Bill Clinton as president and do not include the Department of Homeland Security in the listing of cabinet departments and government agencies.

I have a similar story. Our school's library had been closed for many years up until two years ago. We currently have two librarians and working computers, but many of the shelves are still empty. Last year I was walking around the back storerooms of the library in order to access our auditorium's lighting board (from the 1970's), and I saw an old book just laying of the floor.

It turned out to be a copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost--published in the 1870's. Of course I wanted to bring it home and give it the proper care it needed, but it belongs to my school. I gave it the librarian and asked her to keep it somewhere safe. I'm sure there are more antique books in need of restoration of proper care somewhere back there.

Just another example of my school's neglected historical worth.

Old, outdated textbooks can provide contrasts in terms of teaching about how history is written.

Old books (PERIOD) should never be discarded. They are very useful! One of the coolest ones out there is actually online...the 1911 Encyclopedia. It is fascinating to learn and teach about what people "knew" way back when.

A few years back I worked at Thomas Johnson Elementary. I found a book in the library titled Adventures of the Negro Cowboys. It has a copyright date in the mid-1960s, if I recall correctly, so I guess that's about as PC as the book title was going to get. It was kind of interesting in the sense that it didn't really differentiate their lives much from those of their caucasian counterparts. They weren't any more or less noble than anyone else, but they seem to have disappeared from our view of the Old West largely because they were rather well-integrated.