Archives

by Dr. Tara de Mel

This conference I believe is focussed on developing Sinhala and Tamil supplementary readers for primary schools. The importance of the development of supplementary readers in all the languages for all grades cannot be stressed over and over again. It is crucial and critical in the development of the wholesome personality of a school going child. Children across the board must have access to supplementary reading material in all three (03) languages during their entire school going years.

I am pleased to note that the Education Publications Department and the Primary English Language Project have taken significant action to provide a variety of supplementary readers in English.

This new move to introduce Sinhala and Tamil supplementary reading materials is most welcome in the context of promoting reading in all 3 languages. This kind of initiative gives a tremendous opportunity for talented writers and potential publishers to demonstrate their skills.

The government has embarked upon an extensive Education Reform process since 1998. The Education Reforms aim at making children critical thinkers and analytical persons who have an extensive knowledge and a repertoire of skills, in a very broad sense covering all aspects of life.

The school curriculum and the syllabuses have been changed radically but appropriately to achieve the goals of the reforms as they were spelt out by the experts a couple of years ago.

However the number of hours the child spends in the classroom in comparison to the number of hours the child spends at home during term time and during the school holidays are significantly different. So that we cannot expect this wholesome personality development and the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes to come entirely through the school curriculum and the contact the child has with the teacher.

The wealth of knowledge, the extensive amount of information a child can gather through reading books at home during his free time in the week and particularly during the school holidays is a phenomenal amount.

I remember during our school days where my friends and I had no opportunities of watching television, we buried ourselves in books, periodicals, a variety of magazines or anything that was worth reading during that period, to occupy ourselves in the weekends and school holidays. So much so that all of us had travelled to almost every part of the world and learnt the cultures and the geography of distantly remote countries, before we were 18 years old, even without having stepped into an airplane. Such is the breadth of knowledge and the widening of horizons in our tender ages through exposure to reading and books.

What is sad to see now, is a gradual, significant and unhealthy decline in the reading habit as seen in the last decades. The causes for this are varied; technology, television, video games, the internet are perhaps contributory to this decline of such a valuable habit.

Nevertheless no amount of advances in technology and opportunities to interact with new developments in the world, can surpass the achievements you can expect through reading.

The decline in reading is perhaps, one significant reason for the declining ability to spell; write prose, poetry and essays, all of which were the order of the day, in our times.

Lack of awareness on current affairs, general information, knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live, and the lack of capacity to cope with challenges that confront young people, is also a direct consequence of the decline in the reading habit. Here, I must emphasise that the role of a parent is critical. Children from a family that reads, often end up as voracious readers and invariably they pass the habit on to their children.

It is also very refreshing to see that young children when given the exposure to attractive and readable books develop a thirst for it and they seek in their own way within their socio economic status, more and more books, because the reading habit is somewhat addictive once cultivated.

We are very interested to ensure that Activity Based Oral English, the new subject in the primary grades, is supplemented with an interesting and appealing book to suit the mind of the 5-6 year old child. I do hope the Primary English Language Project will consider a request from the Ministry to introduce a book of that nature to grades 1 and 2, on the same lines as those of the books targeting Grade 3.

The Ministry of Education has in the past few years through the World Bank Project initiated the library development programme where 4,000 schools will eventually have well-equipped library units. But our aim is not to stop with that but to reach the 10,000 school mark, and to ensure that these libraries have books displayed in a very pleasing and attractive manner.

Books should not be locked away in cupboards with padlocks, and the libraries should be staffed by a group of people who are passionately fond of books themselves.

We need to have qualified librarians who have the necessary knowledge and training to encourage the children in the school to use the library in the most profitable manner.

A library must be a place where children want to escape to, bury themselves in books and various forms of pleasurable reading. The library should be their refuge, the place to relieve the monotony of the classroom and examinations.

More recently the Ministry appointed a National Reading Habit Taskforce consisting of well-known book publishers, university academics, representation from private sector organisations and officials from the Ministry.

Their task was to take steps to make reading, a national mission. This taskforce has come with the series of very exciting recommendations, all of which are now in the process of being implemented in stages.

We intend flooding classrooms with books, making it compulsory for every child to read a book, at least one very month, to make the teacher discuss the books by the children in a said period during the week. Then we would have a class discussing about 40 books in a given month. That was how we, in our youth learned about many other books even though we had not read all of them. The library period in the school will be redesigned and made more focussed so that teachers themselves will be the guide to reading for the children and to make it an enjoyable habit. Through this national reading habit taskforce we will also be bringing measures to promote the use of books by mobile libraries, community reading centres, using the television and radio to promote listening to books being read, and so on.

One major objective of this programme is to ensure that by reading and the knowledge and wisdom they acquire, the divide between the different social sectors of the population, will eventually ease out. You would agree with me when a human being is equipped with knowledge and has access to information he or she can stand on par with any other person, who may not be his or her equal in a social setting.

Reading and the exposure to books; we are confident, will achieve the objectives of the education reforms faster in a more productive manner. We will create a generation of children who, through having access to more reading materials will learn to question their teachers, will learn to analyse critically evaluate and develop skills that are essential to cope with all the challenges that will confront them in the future.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager