CONSUMER CONCERNS...READING ESSENTIAL FOR HIGHER ACADEMIC SUCCESS

CONSUMER CONCERNS…READING ESSENTIAL FOR HIGHER ACADEMIC SUCCESS

Sep 27, 2015 News

PAT DIAL
Relating to a wide spectrum of consumers, many of whom are parents of secondary school children and even University students, we have witnessed the great worry and uncertainty both parents and students feel about their achieving success in their school and university studies. From time to time, parents have asked us, as a life-long educationist, to guide and help their children, and University students come to us for help with their long papers and theses.
A major problem with the school and University students, is the fact that their reading had been confined to the CXC syllabus, which, in any case, they never did with any thoroughness.
For example, many have never heard of Napoleon or Julius Caesar or Shakespeare’s Hamlet and have never read any of the world’s classics. A great part of their “education” seems to be confined to looking at Television and the popular programmes among them are the most superficial. Only a very tiny percentage views the Educational and Learning Channels with regularity.
Wide reading is a necessity if Guyanese students are to achieve better academic standards and to be able to deal with the problems of their future lives and to be able to do the world’s work efficiently.
With wider reading, a young person’s skills in the knowledge and use of language would immensely improve. He/she would be able to express himself/herself effectively and with overall improvement of language skills, students would be able to understand the various text books and improve their performance.
Reading the world’s classics would give young people a great deal of wisdom and would lead to greater personal happiness; ability to deal successfully with the numerous persons and personalities one would encounter as one progresses through life and would elevate cultural levels.
For example, if a young person were exposed to George Eliot’s novels, or Shakespeare, or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Bhagvat Gita, the Ramayan, the Bible, the Koran and the Buddhist scriptures, he would understand the Human Condition and how the world works and would be able to successfully navigate through life and assist others along the way.
In this effort to improve academic standards among young people, to raise cultural and moral levels, and to provide the path of their leading happier, more creative and successful lives, parents have to play a major role.
Parents have to ensure that their children read widely and this would mean that they should take advantage of the Library facilities and use the Television for the Educational Channels. Parents need to exert more discipline on their children so that they would not waste a valuable part of their lives that could be more creatively employed in playing computer games and looking at cartoons.
In a word, parents need to be intimately involved in disciplining their children and guiding them. They should exorcise from their minds the illusion that teachers or the school system or “lessons” tutors had or would have assumed this responsibility.
The Ministry of Education and the teacher-training institutions must consciously and positively adopt the cultivation of reading among the young as part of their remit. A list of, say, two hundred books which every educated person should read in his/her life, should be compiled. That list should be widely disseminated in the teacher-training institutions and the Ministry of Education should actively and persistently promote it. This would imply that stocks of those books would have to be imported for the libraries, the schools and even bookshops.
In addition to this list, the Ministry of Education and the teacher-training institutions should promote the Classics in the schools.
In compiling the list, the Authorities should invoke the contributions of as broad a spectrum of able persons from academia, the religious and cultural institutions and members of the public who would desire to make recommendations. The compilers should avoid the pitfall of an undue stress on Caribbean writings.

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CONSUMER CONCERNS…READING ESSENTIAL FOR HIGHER ACADEMIC SUCCESS

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