Letter of the Day |Multi-use textbooks help ease the economic burden on parents

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Writers and publishers have seized upon the lucrative idea of twinning content and workbooks since it all but guarantees that the same book cannot be reused. This trend is particularly pronounced at the primary level. I recently saw a grade four book list where all but one of the recommended texts were workbooks! In families that have multiple children, this means that a whole new set of texts has to be bought for each child, each year. However, if traditional textbooks were used, they could easily be passed from one sibling to another.

Even as we grapple with the many issues that beset our education system, one that cannot be overlooked is the expense of learning resources for students. Minimising this practice of making essential texts, workbooks, could help to minimise this expense. Of course, these books would have questions and activities that students would have to complete, but they would do this in their notebooks, which are significantly less expensive than the workbooks. Children at the primary level also need to learn how to organise things on a page. Often, this skill is lost because everything is already laid out in the workbook.

Additionally, If textbooks rather than workbooks were used, a book rental programme, similar to what obtains at the secondary level, could be implemented.

The Ministry of Education should do everything within its power to encourage the creation of multi-use textbooks to help ease the economic burden on Jamaican parents.

M.M