Gurdaspur, October 29: The state Education Department has established libraries in all 3,665 high and senior secondary schools across the state, but failed to allocate specific periods for students willing to go and read books there.
This has been going on for the last three decades. The Education Department mandarins claim that students are allowed to visit libraries in “adjustment” periods. However, school principals claim that they have no such instructions.
An adjustment period is when a teacher of a particular subject is absent and some other teacher is asked to substitute.
In the absence of students, librarians are asked to do menial jobs such as supervising preparation of mid-day meals, going to banks and doing clerical work in the principal’s office.
Krishan Kumar, Education Secretary, said timetables were too cramped for giving space to library periods. “Moreover, students have to study nine subjects, which leave them with little time to do anything else. Even then we are looking into this aspect,” he said.
Sources, however, say that this can be easily rectified as the timetables are prepared by principals under the guidelines formulated by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), a body which falls under the ambit of the Education Secretary.
To complicate matters, the department had a post of Deputy Director (Books) in Chandigarh. His job was to ensure rationalisation of grants received from time to time from the state and Central governments to be given to libraries. However, about 20 years ago, the post was abolished.
Academicians say this is a worrying trend. “A library is a delivery room for birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life. It is totally illogical on the part of the Education Department not to have allocated library periods. Officials should rectify this anomaly as soon as possible if the culture of reading books has to survive. Google can bring you a million answers but a librarian will bring you the right one,” said academician Dr Satinder Singh.
Interestingly, the department held a one-day orientation workshop for librarians at Mohali on October 25.
“Libraries have lost their utility. On the one hand, there are no specific periods and, on the other, students are at the mercy of their teachers if at all they have to visit the library. During recess, librarians are not present as they are assigned other work. I fail to understand the initiative of holding workshops and seminars if students have no access to libraries,” said Sandeep Kumar Salhotra, general secretary, Punjab Schools Librarians Association.
Source Tribune India
