Clueless about the importance of reading in schools

Sep 12, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
On Monday 9th September, 2013, one of the greatest ‘eye-pass’ was perpetrated by the Ministry of Education of this country. In an effort to generate interest in reading, the Ministry of Education had a ‘Give a Book’ day and at 11 hours commanded that everyone ‘Drop everything and Read for 15 minutes.’
This is downright ‘eye-pass’. It is this Ministry which stopped employing librarians in schools. Here is the Ministry of Education campaigning for students to read for 15 minutes of one day of the year and at the same time destroy the reading culture in schools by not hiring librarians in schools. What is even more absurd is that the Ministry of Education continues to build schools with library rooms even though librarians are never hired and books are never provided for the library. In many schools, these future libraries are sealed.
There is an aspect of inequality present here as well. Schools controlled by a Board can hire a librarian. As such, Queen’s College, The Bishops’ High School, St. Stanislaus College, etc, can have a librarian, but schools under the mercy of the Ministry of Education must read for 15 minutes of one day of the year. The geniuses at the Ministry of Education have not yet realized that there is positive correlation between the absence of a reading culture and the miserable CSEC English results.
The Ministry of Education is clueless when it comes to the importance of reading in schools. This Ministry makes a big fuss when it uses taxpayers’ money to photocopy textbooks and share to students. It would be nice to know how many non-textbooks have been distributed to libraries and how many libraries have been refurbished.
Here is another example of the Ministry’s oblivious approach when it comes to reading. The 2015 syllabus for English B has started in Grades 9 and 10 around the country. No school has received the textbooks on the syllabus to start teaching as yet. No teacher received copies in July to prepare to teach in September. Quite recently, some Departments of Education distributed A Midsummer’s Night Dream which is on the old syllabus that comes to an end this year. It would be nice if the Ministry of Education can ‘Give the books on the 2015 syllabus’.
Mohammed S. Hussain

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