Effa Tambenkongho
3 September 2008
Bookshops are still empty as just few customers come in to buy textbooks.
Just one week to the start of the academic year 2008/2009, bookshops are still empty and waiting for customers. The booklist was published in July giving parents and shop keepers enough to time to prepare for the school year. It would appear parents did not do a good job and are still lagging behind.
Besides, this year there has been some changes in some of the books which were used last academic year and a revision of some of the books. This situation some parents have complained is disheartening because they are forced to keep buying textbooks each year whereas it was not so in the past. They complain government each year changes or revises textbooks and they are forced to buy them. It is not a pleasant situation too for booksellers because they said they have old stock of the books they have not been able to sell because either the book has been changed or revised. This is a disadvantage on their part and a waste of resources.
Visiting the Messapress Library in Akwa, sell all sorts of textbooks. They have dropped rates of their textbooks to encourage customers yet the sales are still discouraging, an anonymous bookseller of the library told Cameroon Tribune. He said parents are not very enthusiastic when it comes to buying text boos fro their children, it is not because they don not want to but they thin it is costly ding the same exercise year by year.
A bookseller, Samuel Petiangabo told CT he has invested allot in buying textbooks because since it is the season for going back to school he knows parents will buy textbooks as well as exercise boos. But "it is failing me". Just few people buy. He said he wants to believe that in a few more days to the start of classes, parents will react.
The story is not too different with LIPACAM which is lie one of the biggest Libraries in Douala. Customers do come in but not for textbooks but for other school accessories. Parents buy exercise books, pens, pencils and only a few turn around the area of textbooks. Some of them postpone the buying of textbooks in the next round for shopping.
Nevertheless, the few who buy the textbooks said they know the importance of textbooks that is why they will go extra miles to buy them in spite of the costs.
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Changing of academic textbooks is to meet up with current knowledge but some parents do not seem to understand this. Knowledge evolves every second but we Africans are still left far behind and there are no serious indications that we will soon catch up with the rest of world. Parents should seriously and actively get involved in the quality of education for their kids, (being aware of the fact that we have a very useless and irresponsible government in power.) A government that has no responsible vision whatsoever. Parents should collaborate with teachers in every way possible to ensure that the kids are well educated and the educators are pleased in doing their job. Which means whatever pressure our educators are mounting on this useless administration to ameliorate the educational system, should always receive active and undivided support of parents because at the end of the day, teachers are not seeking a reformed educational system for themselves but for the kids, who are the future that will take care of us all. African writers should get back to work and come out with knowlegeable materials for the kids. We keep importing western knowledge, which is actually leading us to nowhere other than to continue to be slaves to the western world. If Africa is independent, it should be independent in all aspects. Western knowledge is supposed to compliment our own African knowledge from science to the humanities.