Pupils Should Be Given a Greater Choice of Books

This allAfrica.com opinion piece says One of the great weaknesses of the 8-4-4 system of education is that, contrary to every pedagogical drive that’s considered “best practice” across the so-called developing and developed world, it offers one-size-fits-all qualifications for students who are, let’s face it, different on a number of fundamental social and cultural levels, both within and without the walls of school. To further prescribe for pupils and teachers a narrow list of texts that they must choose resources from is misguided and offensive, undermining teachers’ professionalism during a period of low morale. It is also mere schooling, more like monoculture farming, than the genuine and benevolent education of young humans.

March 8, 2005 by Uncategorized 1

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1 Response

  1. Lee Hadden says:
    March 8, 2005 at 7:37 pm

    Textbooks
    There is some need for consistency in education, especially in developing countries. Because of poverty, the increased call for books if teachers assign more topics or texts to study would put a bind on school and local libraries.
    What would be wonderful, and I’m dissapointed that the US is not doing this, is to give grants to local book publishers to publish textbooks for local school systems, increasing the numbers of authors and competion in the publishing industry. For example, many kids in Iraq are still using texts from Saddam’s regime, with much cant and political slant still in place. If the US put even a little bit of money into having competing publishers write and distribute new textbooks for all grade levels, it would do much to give authors and publishing companies an extra boost. Also, many English language texts need to translated into Arabic for use by the students. There are fewer books translated into Arabic than any other major language. Here is our chance to make the world’s English literature open to all the Arabs, rather than insisting they learn one or more other languages to get access.

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