New Edition?

I have mixed feelings about the new edition of The Presence of Others. I haven't read all of the essays, of course, but I have perused the table of contents. It appears that Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz have added some great essays in the gender, ethics, and business/labor sections of the anthology (by the way, I like that they made ethics its own section). They've also dropped a few good readings, most notably Neil Postman's "The Great Symbol Drain." I also think I'll miss Jimmy Carter and Elie Wiesel's essays on the Iraq war, since they're perfect opposites for the critical analysis assignment. But the Iraq war has been debated to death, so I understand dropping those essays.

From a teaching perspective, I think it would be great to make copies of good readings from the old anthology (such as Postman's "Symbol Drain") to use in addition to the new anthology. From the student's perspective, I'm not sure that the new readings are necessarily worth the higher cost of a brand new edition. Perhaps a good middle ground would be to wait a year or two until there will be plenty of used copies of the new edition available via bookstores and the internet. After all, I have a feeling that most current T.A.s will use the same readings from the old edition since they are familiar with those readings, with maybe a few new ones added to the syllabus. In which case, I would be seriously upset if I were a 110 student who had to pay a lot more for the same old readings. (Of course, a 110 student will have no idea if this is the case, but I think teachers should put themselves in their student's shoes as much as possible, especially when deciding what would be best for their learning, finances, preparation for future classes, etc.)