Pauline Etienne
12 February 2008
Port Louis — All the new textbooks are illustrated with local pictures so as to bring them closer to pupils' daily lives.
The need has been felt for more 'local' textbooks that would bring the teaching of religious knowledge closer to pupils' daily lives. "Young Mauritians are confronted with various challenges that lead them to ask themselves questions on their identity, their future, their Mauritian dream," explained the editing committee. The new religious education programme, Talita Koum, was launched last Monday by the National Commission of the Catholic Church for School Catechesis to try and re-introduce positive values to the young generation. Five new programmes for various age groups will now be used by catechism teachers for a more "life experience and faith-based approach to gospel teachings".
While Canadian and other foreign textbooks were used for catechism teaching, the "production of contextualised textbooks was long overdue as RE teachers observed repeatedly in classroom situations that the Canadian textbooks were becoming quite irrelevant to the Mauritian context," stated the editing committee, whose work was coordinated by Father Alain Romaine.
The new programme was based on a survey carried out on 6,500 secondary students to better understand the sociological and cultural realities of young people. The findings were the key to the development of a Mauritian curriculum. "Since then, various designs, focus teams and writing panels have been set up to develop the RE curriculum and materials," said a representative of the committee.
Faced with strong social fractures, school failure, parents' difficulty in facing the failure in the transmission of values and the lack of dialogue, these new interactive sessions aim to be a way of sharing difficulties and re-inculcating basic values. The new programme is of course intended to encourage study of the Christian message while bringing it closer to what young people are experiencing on a daily basis.
Each programme is adapted to the different age groups. It takes into account the profile of the young people at every stage including their emotional and sexual life and sets orientations to include a certain number of values.
"To tou pou mwa" is specially aimed at pupils of the prevocational stream. This programme is intended to make them realise that they have their place in society and to revive their self-confidence. The prevocational materials are written exclusively in Creole while the others are mainly in French with some Creole texts. All books are illustrated with local pictures.
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