Masum Billah :
The educationists, intellectuals, print and electronic media talk against the note and guide books available in the education market. The weakness of our education system particularly the assessment system has created scope for the publishers to print and market note and guide books and encourage students to buy them to obtain good marks and good grades in the public examinations. The existing situation of education highlights and focuses on obtaining marks and good grades instead of bothering about what our pupils really learn. Admission in higher education and social status and the reputation of the institutions and teachers also depend on how many students have obtained GPA-5 from a particular institution. This culture definitely encourages students, teachers and guardians to be scorers, GPA-5 holders instead of making them eager to gather knowledge in a particular subject or area. Out note and guide book publishers have come forward to helping the students, teachers and guardians to manage good grade for the students without undergoing hard labour or utilizing their own creativity. The publishers thus cater to the demands of the current trend of education and society.
There exists another kind of publishers exist who claim themselves to be creative publishers as they don’t publish the note and guide books or the books to help students get good grades in the examination. This group publishes the books written by writers of various types such as expatriate writers, businessmen writers, professional writers, regular writers, rich and influential people. They publish the books at the cost of money and most of the publishers except a few ones publish the books in the most unprofessional way. They just publish the books to extract money from the writers who need just reputation or just to include their names in the writers’ list. Money does not matter to them. This scope is seized by the publishers as capital. And as an upshot of it, low quality or no-quality books flood the market dwarfing the real quality books. And the publishers don’t bother about reaching out the readers of the remotest parts of the country. It really proves to be a difficult task that this kind of publishers doesn’t want to undergo. Though these kinds of publishers have been supposed to work as a mediator between the writers and readers and work very professionally, they just employ their efforts to extract money from the seasonal writers. They hardly give any importance to increase the readers, promote the real writes and thus contribute greatly to creating a knowledgeable society. They just wait only for Ekushey Boi Mela without trying to expand the book market across the country.
The note guide publishers contribute to retarding the creativity of the students as they produce the same answers students need to write for passing in the examination. Students need not think of their own of ideas to produce in the examination scripts. This group sells seven thousand and two hundred crore taka books every year that came down to to only 720 crore taka due to corona. That means in nine months’ time book selling occurred six thousand 480 crore less. 80 percent staff of this industry has been forced to go on leave without salary. In the midst of this crisis police has started raiding and searching for note and guide books that must be stopped as the leaders of this group said. Now the question is which book publishers should we call creative publisher? The publishers who publish textbooks and helping books or those who publish books of different writers beyond the textbooks? The textbook and helping book publishers publish books and sell them to the students through teachers who take money from the publishers. On the other hand, the so-called creative publishers with little exceptions take money from the writers to publish their books and thus flood the market with low quality books that definitely kills the taste of the readers. Interestingly, these seasonal and commercial publishers don’t bother about publishing the quality books of different writers as they cannot take money from them. Rather they will have to market those books which they think is a difficult task.
In all the tiers of the society the money game is rampant. Can education sector remain intact without it? How can we expect that the people involved with education business, book business will remain pure? Can we fully hold them responsible? Still we should not let it happen for thoes who have designed to kill the creativity of the students. These people spend a big amount of money every year to sell their books that raises questions of quality. Many teacher organizations directly and indirectly take money from them to sell their books ignoring the fact of killing students’ creativity. Similarly the so- called creative publishers take money from the writers to publish their books marring the spirit of real publishing industry. They just publish books to gain their financial benefits. Both these groups can be held responsible for working against the real spirit of publication industry. However, the existence of both groups proves their visual reality that cannot be ignored, let alone erased from the society. In this perspective, some pure guidelines can be developed by two national level expert groups so that the nation can utilize the real talent, effort and experience of both groups of publishers in the greater interest of the nation.
(Mr. Billah works for BRAC Education and President- English Teachers’ Association of Bangaldesh. Email: [email protected]
