Course Books. Ugh.
I was checking out my brother’s textbooks earlier this morning and found myself disappointed. He’s in sixth grade by the way, and he’s not much into school. If you know what I mean.
My first thoughts when I opened his Social Studies (Sibika) book was: WOW. It’s in full color. And I don’t mean red and black printing press full color, but the whole color-spectrum full color.
No wonder those books cost P500 each.
What irks me more is the fact that most of the pictures aren’t even necessary. Most of them don’t have captions and has no or very little significance to the text.
And have I mentioned how huge the pictures are? They covered almost half of the page.
I realize pictures are a must in any book - especially for children. It makes the whole learning thing seem fun and all, but with what I saw the pictures became more of a distraction instead of a supplement to the subject being discussed.
The pictures aren’t even well picked out. They are wasting precious space and ink - and money.
And it doesn’t help that the school requires about 13 books of this kind - a book for each subject.
Now that I think of it, what do text books do anyway? I can’t help thinking that it just limits the child’s source of information. Instead of having to go and find his/her own resources, which are very much available anywhere - the student can just choose to rely on the course book.
What more if the teachers use it in that same way? What good will they be to their students?