Through an initiative of Guyana’s Ambassador to Washington, Bayney Karran and the Food for the Poor organization, literacy and numeracy got a boost here with the presentation of over five million books to the Ministry of Education.
The 13 containers of books are intended for Nursery, Primary and Secondary schools in core subjects such as English, Literacy, Phonics, Mathematics, Reading, Science, Social Studies and Spanish, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported. Eleven containers have already been distributed to the 10 regions and Georgetown.
The remaining two containers of books have been assigned to the National Library and its subsidiaries, the National Centre for Education and Resource Develop-ment (NCERD), the Cyril Potter College of Education, the Uni-versity of Guyana and identified non-governmental organizations, GINA said.
At the presentation ceremony at NCERD on Friday, according to GINA, Minister of Education Shaik Baksh said: “I am really happy that we were able to get so many good books into the school system and I am hopeful that this will upgrade the quality of students through further reading.”
The education minister expressed appreciation for the donation and noted that this will not be the only shipment of books as others are expected later this year and next year.
He said that the ministry has been working with the Guyanese Diaspora to contribute to the education sector with books and computers.
Baksh said further that the plan over the next five years is that all the secondary schools would have computer laboratories as well as the technical institutes and 50 per cent of the primary schools in order to promote information technology in the school system.
Meanwhile, the ministry has recently been resuscitating school libraries across Guyana.
Ambassador Karran, Food for the Poor and Larparkan representatives said that they were pleased to be part of the venture which will have an impact on the education sector.
From reading the news article, it appearS that those books have been donated by the Guyanese Diaspora in coordination with the education ministry.
As such the books will probably be targeting Diaspora kids’ syllabus in foreign schools and may not fit completely with Guyanese teaching targets/style.
Nevertheless, this is certainly a start and it can only have a positive influence on the school system.
The originators of this brilliant idea of inward Diaspora investment must be congratulated and my hope is that this donation system becomes a continuous process. See; it does’nt have to be just about sending money back to Guyana without any targets!
Perhaps, in the future, the Diaspora could use their funds to buy books fully in tune with the Guyanese teaching system.
On a personal note, I would add that I have been involved with enhancing Guyanese schools on a small level.
What we aim to do is to provide six schools every two years with
17inch TV monitor,
a DVD player,
a classroom amplifer and
half dozen DVDs containing Nursery, Primary and Secondary schools subjects such as English, Literacy, Phonics, Mathematics, Reading, Science and Social Studies.
We have found some proactive (and some INACTIVE) head teachers.
The proactive ones are really enhancing their pupils’ education and we are encouraging those with more assistance.
Books are books are books. It matters not where they come from. It seems to me that the bigger task would be to get the children reading and to keep them reading. On that note it would wiser to acquire computers for schools rather than TVs and DVD players.