Growing numbers of public school teachers are shunning the use of textbooks in their classes, education experts report. Instead, the teachers are developing their own classroom materials, which they say are more stimulating.

Various reasons for the trend are cited:

• Education schools are training teachers to rely less on reading and more on hands-on activities, observers say.

• Disputes over textbook content have made publishers wary of offending any interest group, leading to bland and shallow content, some teachers complain.

• Some of them even cite a decline in children's reading skills as a rationale for abandoning texts.

• But school boards still order textbooks, even if teachers refuse to use them -- a fact substantiated by the textbook industry's 12 percent increase in revenues last year.

Parents and school board members are generally quite supportive of the use of texts, and teachers and school officials who argue otherwise do so at their peril, education specialists report.

Textbook publishers are accused of putting out volumes that are incomplete, simple-minded and too politically correct. One popular American history textbook discusses Woodstock and AIDS, but has only one sentence on the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade abortion decision.

Education experts contend that the rare, truly great teacher may be able to teach without a textbook, but they are essential for students under the tutelage of run-of-the-mill teachers. "A bright student can pick up a lot from the text even if the teacher is not doing well," says a parent and member of a Virginia school board.