Supplies of school textbooks

Supplies of school textbooks

From Kompas

As a mother who has several school-aged children, I fully support the complaint made by a headmaster in a school in Cikarang, Bekasi about the quality of school textbooks.

Students are required to buy a new set of books each year. What makes it worse is that these books are not available in bookstores as they are supplied only by the schools concerned.

In previous years, a student could pass on his or her school textbooks to his or her younger brother or sister. Today, this is impossible because the content of one particular school textbook used in a certain year will be different from the one used in the following year.

It is tragic that as life is getting increasingly more difficult for many people that those in the educational field are freely doing business with school textbooks. How can people who barely earn enough to keep body and soul together afford to buy so many new school textbooks each year? How can the young gain intelligence if they cannot afford to buy books?

In the past, used books could be donated to the poor. Today, they are simply sold to scavengers.

In this context, the education minister must take action against the people at the schools who are making a lot of money out of school textbooks. If necessary, the minister must not allow schools to sell them.

In addition, the minister must also scrap the "special procedure" of accepting students, from the junior high school level to university level, because the victims will be smart children from poor families.

WATI AISAH Depok, West Java