Editorial
Enriching primary school textbooks
An agenda that needs to be addressed energetically
YEARS of blasé attitude to school textbooks had up until recently been reflected through delayed publication schedules as books reached children well into an advancing academic session and, that too, with distorted textual contents in certain areas. But now it seems another dimension to the legacy of indifference has come to light. It's the poor quality production of textbooks making dull reading for our children that is now exercising the minds of our educators.
The child's mind is both receptive and impressionable, so what it soaks up it does so as if writing on a clean slate. It is said that impressions formed in the early years of childhood go to shape their mental makeup into adolescence. Primary schooling together with sights and sounds of nature and immediate environs are the stuff of which the most important phase of the learning process is made. Little wonder, therefore, that teachers at this stage are required by the experts to be skilled in child psychology so that what they impart to the boys and girls in classroom situations is appealing to the latter, can sharpen their wits, fire their imagination and unlock the deeper recesses of their minds.
What can be the quality of teachers' instructions if the prescribed books school books themselves happen to be of indifferent, or poor quality. And if on top of it, they are published with unattractive design and layout, thickly set prints, drab and inappropriate illustrations, all in poor quality paper of varying shades, what benefit can either the class teachers, and more importantly, the pupils derive from them?
It needs hardly to be emphasised that for children, illustrations, pictorial, painted or graphic are as important as the text because they receive and retain knowledge better through linking the visual to the textual. Thus, we welcome the news of the government forming a five member committee to introduce changes in cover designs and illustrations of textbooks. Experts from the civil society may be co-opted for a broader-based policy decision while implementation is left to the professionals.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments