USA Education sucks - Delmar's Standard Textbook of Electricity

[Johan]

I use Delmar's Standard Textbook of Electricity - Seventh Edition - by Stephen L. Herman (Cengage) as a textbook for my course towards becoming a licensed electrician at WECA (educational institution approved by the state of California, USA). I think that the quality of both this textbook as well as WECA, including many of its teachers, is mediocre at best. I define high quality as a high fraction of correct (true) information/facts, i.e. matching the state of art in science etc. In this thread, I want to focus on the aforementioned book. My colleagues seem not to notice nor bother. I see very little critical thinking around me. However, I am not the first one complaining about this book. Look at the frustration shown here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3sm2jj/my_textbook_says_electricity_is_faster_than_light

I am detail oriented, which I thought was a good thing around electrical systems. Should I just expanding on exercising the art of not giving a sh*t? Anybody else with similar experiences? If this case is representative of trade school quality in the USA in general, then there is a lot of room for improvement. I know it's largely the student's resposibility to succeed, but the literature and school should at least try to minimize leading people astray. WTF.

 

[timselectric]

The lesson learned, is only as good as the teacher providing the information.
And teachers are no different from any other profession. There are some good ones and there are some who are just putting in the time.

 

[Bongbong]

Your focus should be on passing the exam in order to become an electrician, and in your working life, just follow the rules (even if they are stupid) as you don't want to be prosecuted.

During your career as an electrician you will come across a whole bunch of things that are "wrong", but it is very unlikely that you will be able to change the rules, so relax. There will be different rules based on your location. For example, my personal pet peeve is grounding, a topic frequently discussed here with many different viewpoints. The only place in the world that seems to do grounding somewhat "right" in my opinion, is Japan. And by "right" I mean least bad, since there is no perfect way to protect people and equipment. But I just follow the local rules...

You might want to consider a different profession other than electrician if you are detailed oriented especially when things, that have little practical impact on your day to day job, bother you. For example, programmer, quality control in a factory, accountant and even lawyer. That might sound harsh, but I mean this in the nicest possible way.