Textbooks

A discussion has been started on our twitter, #csusmedu, about text books.  Its true, they are outdated and boring!  Other resources should be used!
I have learned that text books have their purposes though.  It still provides a good base.  This learning has come from the fact that my subject does not have a text book.  A text book sets the guideline and unifies material.  If I had a text book in my class I feel I would see the following things change:

P.E. could be taught with more importance than just skills and game play.  A text could guide the class and make it a more legitimate learning environment.  Okay, so I could do this with many other resources, but a text also unifies what is being taught.  Every time I step onto a new campus I have to learn a new way a sport is being played.  The rules, regulations, points, everything the game is composed of.  It makes it difficult!  I feel sorry for any student who moves schools frequently.  High school is always the best because students have been fed from many different middle schools and views on game rules.  It can be difficult to sort through sometimes.  The text book will create a more illegitimate learning environment for physical education because it will provide the base ideas of what needs to be given to students.  Our subject only recently obtained standards, but I feel some departments are not providing students with education of fitness, they are only providing them fitness.  I would never want to teach to the text, but some physical education programs are so "open", not set by standards, that if students were not in uniforms you would think it was recess.  A text could help teachers provide a more structured learning environment.  If there was a text for each grade it would also help with the vast amount of different manipulative and locomotor differences in the class.  Even in high school, I will have students who have played softball/baseball all their lives and then students who have never touched a bat before in their lives because past teachers chose other sports (or didn't teach skills).  I am not saying text books would fix this issue, I feel that it could help P.E. take a step in the right direction though.