[freehunter]

I was recently re-reading a textbook that I had in college and I realized just how much of the book we skipped in class when I noticed how many chapters were unfamiliar to me. I remembered how much we skipped around to put things in a more logical order and what questions we skipped in the tests as well... not sure why textbooks are often written to illogically that it takes a teacher to decipher them.

[fenfennek]

I think Tim Ferris commented on this problem once in a Google Talk where the topic of the quality of (text)books came up:

To a big part it comes down to the fact that ideas and chapters presented in books are most often structured and sequenced in a way that suits the author in writing it. Less about what would actually be the best way of presenting the material from a learner's perspective.