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The majority of us deeply think about disastrous activities such as
suicide bombings and blasts on buses and trains.
Train and bus passengers, commuters, passers by must think about
their lives. There is a saying ‘the calm before the storm.’ This silence
does not show everything is O.K.
Not only poor civilians but also well-to-do people travel by public
transport. It is our right to lookafter ourselves and others too. Most
of the railway commuters are used to have a siesta, or a nap on their
journey.
True, they may be tired of working for eight hours or running a few
fathoms to catch the bus or train. Some ladies may be tired both
physically and mentally.
Without thinking about ways of resting and enjoying, be alert. That
is the greatest service you can do to your country.
S. HETTIGE - Kuliyapitiya
Do school children make full use of the free textbooks they get from
the State and fulfil the hopes, wishes and aspirations of the people who
introduced this programme?
It’s no secret that a fair share of the national income goes for
pointing and distribution of the textbooks to the school population:
when you study and analyse the G.C.E. O/L and A/L results one could
judge how the performance of the school children in using the free
school text books.
It’s disheartening and horrible. If the children make maximum use of
the school text books, more than 90 per cent of the O/L and A/L
candidates should pass the examinations. But results show that the
children do not make full use of the textbooks at all.
Some school children leave their text books in the classroom, as the
books are too heavy to carry up and down. This is very frequent at Maha
Vidyalayas and national schools. Even some teachers encourage them to
leave the textbooks in the classroom. Most of them leave the English,
Maths and Science texts in the classroom.
They never take them home. If anybody who is interested in verifying
these facts, visit a big school after school hours and check the
classrooms.
He or she could find the truth about this.
On the other hand, most of the children do not even touch their
school text books at home. They lie in the bag and are taken out for a
brief time in the classroom.
Most children attend tuition classes after school. Even there they
don’t make use of the text books. Instead they are given hand outs,
completely different from the school textbook contents and the
syllabuses.
It’s the prime duty of the parents to make their children read the
free school textbooks at home at least for a couple of hours per day.
But what’s sad and alarming is parents as well as their offspring are
glued to the TV’s forgetting everything else in the household.
On the other hand, the school teachers should make reading
compulsorily, as they did in the past, and penalise those who fail to
read. Teachers should be very strict with the children. If they show any
leniency children would make fun of the them.
When I say penalise only one or two need to be punished in a class
and not everybody. You can’t make them work without punishment. So let
the teachers compel the children to make full use of the textbooks for
the sake of the State and the ratepayers.
Do not allow them to leave the textbooks in the classrooms at any
cost. Supervision is the need of the hour. Motivate the children to use
the textbooks, rather than asking them to read other books.
Parents today go for educational tabloids from pre-school level up to
A/L but never encourage the children to make use of the free school
textbooks.
D.M.P.B. DISSANAYAKE – Kegalle
Motorists and other road users would be ever grateful, if the SSP
(Traffic) would take remedial measures to ease the congestion at this
junction near (Union Bank), by deploying Traffic Police officers during
peak hours to regulate traffic.
Traffic from Narahenpita Road is unable to negotiate and turn towards
the right on the Nawala Road proceeding to Nugegoda, since there is
utter confusion at this junction. The 176 route bus drivers are a law
unto themselves and prevent entry of any vehicles approaching from
Narahenpita.
In the alternative, traffic lights should be installed on a priority
basis. This measure would save valuable man-hours and fuel being wasted
on the idle running of engines of vehicles.
A.H. SULAMAN - Nugegoda
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