As a parent and someone with great interest in education of
our Nation’s children, I wish to air my issues with the use of workbooks in the
elementary school system. There are 3
main reasons why I think that this is not the best approach to educating our
youngsters.
The first negative in my mind associated with using
workbooks is that parents and guardians are unable to pass down books to
younger children as was the practice some years ago. The pages are all marked up, and in order for
the upcoming child to benefit from the lessons contained in the text, he has to
get a brand new book. Who benefits from
this arrangement? Certainly not the parents, who are put out of pocket every
twelve months being forced to buy brand new books instead of having the option
to purchase a second hand book or pass down a used book. Where parents are put under this pressure, it
makes it less likely that they can purchase 100% of the book list requirement,
thus compromising the overall delivery of information to our young ones. The ones who stand to lose if the use of
workbooks was obliterated are the book publishers and sellers. But in an environment of scarce resources and
an imperative to equip our citizens from the elementary stages in support of
giving us a competitive edge, I think that the Ministry of Education should
side with parents and children in doing what is best for them rather than the
publishers and sellers of books.
The act of writing aids in committing information to
memory. Where children are asked to
merely fill in blanks, I believe the learning process is being short-circuited,
to their ultimate disadvantage.
And lastly, penmanship, sentence construction and the
working of math problems by laying out steps in enough space to accommodate it
(versus being constrained by the miniscule space that the workbook designers
think is sufficient) are all compromised by forcing these young learners to fit
their answers into a prescribed slot with as few words as possible.
I’d like to throw out a challenge to our schools: if the Ministry of Education will not reduce
the numbers of workbooks as part of the recommended book lists for our schools,
then schools can mandate that all working out and answers be done by children
in exercise books, with no writing whatsoever to be done in the workbooks. This will allow second hand books to be sold
and passed on easing the burden on caregivers and allowing the children to
optimize their learning process.
Furthermore, in the event that the publishers try to outsmart schools
and parents by issuing revisions every
year if such an arrangement was indeed instituted by our schools, the Ministry
could institute a policy of limiting revised editions to once every three
years.
Let me be clear, I am not attempting to pit parents and
schools against our book industry. But
in difficult times, difficult decisions have to be made. I believe that giving the upper hand to
parents and children will benefit the Nation more than giving the upper hand to
book publishers and sellers.
The challenge is now yours, Schools and Ministry of
Education.