Focus on books
Fact file as creative lessons for students, teacher and parents
Prof.Sunanda Mahendra
Daru guru deguru poth pela
Satunge Asiriya by Karunaratne Amarasinghe (First in a series of books)
Sadeepa Publishing House, 2008
47 pages. Rs.250.
The wonder of animals as denoted in Sinhala as Satunge Asiriya comes
as a well illustrated gift for children, teachers and parents, at a time
when new innovations are underway in the field of education.
This first in a series is meant to create an awareness in the minds
of the three types, about the various behaviour patterns of animals. A
curiosity is created when single questions are raised. Some questions
like, “Why do you see a dog instinctively sniffing all places?”, “Why
does the dog wag its tail?”, “Do cats see dreams?”, “Why is there a hump
on the back of the camel?, “Do birds see things in the night?, are some
of the questions raised.
The answers are two-fold. Firstly a scientific background in the form
of a narrative is presented to the student in a lighter vein. Secondly,
there is more analysis provided for the teacher and the parent. For the
child the information is fused with the mere visible data.
For the teacher and the parent, it is more of scientific
interpretation. But they are boxed or grouped in such a manner that
there is no strict adherence laid down. Altogether there are thirty six
questions pertaining to various types of animals, birds and serpents.
On reading the profusely illustrated pages of the book full of
information in the form of a creative fact file I found that even a
common reader who so desires to now more about the environmental matter
may gain resourceful insights.
Perhaps a book of this calibre ought to prove the teaching methods
more modern and stimulating. If this text is utilised in the classroom,
the classroom could be turned into a creative laboratory with
supplementary teaching material provided in the classroom become
stimulating the tendency is for the student is to discover or
investigate here in order to sharpen his/her living skills.
In the local set up too, I can see that the use of the supplementary
reader is gradually waning off. But the modern day educationists, who
have done intensive research on learning skills have often declared that
the teacher and the parents should bring back the age old tradition of
the supplementary readers.
It is the traditional norm that the normal parent has the habit of
waiting to obtain the necessary advice from the teacher to guide their
own children. But this tradition bound norm is waning off with the
parent participation in child education.
The home too is a place where the parent plays a vital role in the
moulding up to the skills of their children. This is a good
supplementary guide towards the fulfilment of this mission.
Karunarathne Amarasinghe has gained experience both as a school level
teacher and a media user. According to the notes added it is visualised
that he had been experimenting on the teaching of various subjects more
creatively than it is performed at the moment.
As such this first in the series of books to follow ought to be taken
a serious note of by the three graphs, the student-teacher and this
parent.
Though quite a number of books written in English have flooded the
book market during the recent past, it is unfortunate that the local
educationists had not provided a similar model in Sinhala (I am not sure
of the Tamil stream).
Most of our local educationists concentrate more on the Ministry of
oriented series of syllabus oriented text books. As such the student and
the teacher, leave aside the parent, fail to visualise any panoramic
vision outside the narrative sphere of the mere syllabus based subject.
This is specially noticeable in the case of social sciences. This
drawback could be rectified only through the provision of extra
curriculum supplementary books attractively published. This book
provides such a user-oriented model.
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