The Hindu Business Line : Back to the school library

WHEN the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled the prototype of a cheap and rugged $100 laptop for children at last week's World Summit on the Information Society at Tunis, he was seeking to not only bridge the digital divide but also to "enable kids to become more active in their own learning." If that is the lofty objective, then the Education Department of Kerala should be congratulated as well - albeit for launching a more traditional, less hi-tech programme.

The initiative announced last fortnight is called Vayanayilude Valaruka (Malayalam for "grow up through reading") and, as the name suggests, is meant to encourage the reading habit among schoolchildren. Announcing the programme at a press conference, Education Minister E.T. Mohammed Basheer said that libraries in all government schools and government-aided schools in the State would be modernised and strengthened. Besides, a "library period" will be added to the school timetable.

If all goes according to plan, 393 high schools and 2,827 upper primary schools will get better library facilities during the first phase of the programme by the first week of next year. Lower primary schools will be included later.

The programme hopes to elicit the co-operation of local bodies, non-governmental organisations, local clubs, banks and other financial institutions, school parent-teacher associations, library groups, cooperative societies, public sector institutions and media outfits, including book publishers. According to the Education Minister, popular committees will be set up at the school, panchayat, block and district levels for implementing the programme.

The Education Department has also drawn up an architectural plan that schools can emulate to set up compact library buildings. The Government of Kerala will permit local bodies to use their Plan funds to help the schools in the programme. At a meeting of the programme's steering committee some book publishers reportedly promised special discounts on books for the school libraries.

All this enthusiasm harks back to 1945, when the Kerala Grandhashala Sangham (KGS) was set up with 47 rural libraries. P. N. Panicker, the guiding beacon behind the State-wide movement for adult and non-formal education, managed to rope in 6,000 libraries into the KGS network. At that time - an era that perhaps could never have imagined the Internet as the mother of all networks - the libraries functioned as community centres where ordinary citizens could gather to discuss, debate and listen in on an assortment of seminars and symposia.

The KGS went on to win an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in 1975 and the rural functional literacy programmes that it inspired soon formed the basis for the Total Literacy Programme initiated in 1991 that made Kerala India's first totally literate State.

Thus, the link between libraries and Kerala's superior literacy levels is well established. But, in recent years, with the almost overbearing power of the non-traditional media - mainly the digital world of CD-ROMs, DVDs, IMAX movies and Internet entertainment sites - the power of the written word appears to have somewhat diminished.

Parents today complain that their children hardly read the newspaper and, when they do, it's to check the TV listings! Of course, the worldwide runaway success of the Harry Potter series of children's books should put paid to all such conjecture, even if cynics attribute their success to mere clever marketing.

With this new move to re-ignite in children's minds the power of reading and the lure of the library as a portal to a new world of imagination and knowledge, Kerala's Education Department is rediscovering the virtue of basic truths.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com

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