There’s nothing like a celebrity endorsement to boost a product, and e-books could not ask for a more renowned patron than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though he stands at the pinnacle of fame as governor of California, it doesn’t take much to make him revert to his identity as The Terminator. In this case the things he wants to terminate are textbooks. After hefting a few, Schwarzenegger, arguably the greatest bodybuilder of all time, joked “I can use these for curls.”

But it isn’t the books’ weight that daunts him; it’s their cost. Waging a fight to the death to extirpate his state’s $24 billion budget deficit, he’s questioned whether printed textbooks are any longer viable, especially when schools buy revised and updated volumes every year or two. So, he’s now looking into taking California’s educational system digital.

Mark Tran, writing for the UK’s Guardian website, picked up on a statement of Schwarzenegger’s that appeared in a California newspaper:

“It’s nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form. Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators’ hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources.”

Tran says the Guv wants to replace high school math and science books with e-book readers, which can hold all the schoolbooks students will ever need. And let’s not forget that updated and revised editions are simply one refresh away.

Read Arnold Schwarzenegger to scrap school textbooks in favour of ebooks.

RC