These days every body is talking about the poor standard of education in the country. Everybody is giving suggestions to improve it. No doubt there are umpteen reasons for its failure such as – Dearth of Teachers especially competent ones, No standard of syllabus and having no Uniform Syllabus, Lack of sources due to Poverty etc.. But I’ve found Guides ( Help Books ) to be the mother of all these problems that have caused deteriorating Condition of Education in the country especially in the states like Haryana, Punjab.
There is a big market of Guides. MBD, Deepak and so many brands and publications are in the market. As soon as the classes start, these books invade the class-rooms. The Teachers don’t make any delay in prescribing them. There is no proper reading of the texts. The summaries are read from the guides.
The teachers and the students don’t bother of preparing their notes from the text books ( the text books are not available in the class rooms ). After reading the summaries of the lessons, the students are given the questions from the guides. The student cram them like parrots. Both the teachers and the students escape from bothering to prepare something genuine from the text books.
This trend has also made it easier for everyone to become teachers. The people sans knowledge can become teachers as they have to do nothing in the class- rooms. Just read summary from the guides and tell the students to read and prepare questions from them. Actually there is no use of brain from either side ( Teachers and students ).
They are motivated to cram them to secure good marks in the paper and such teachers and students produce good results in the exams especially in the Board exams without doing anything worthy in the classroom. Due to guides there is no discussion, no debate, no seminar, no constructive work. In case of the languages, no speaking and listening.
Writing work also gets affected as every thing is available in the help books. No handwriting issue and no correction work. Only Cramming and cramming and marks in the board exam. If wish to improve our education system, guides must be banned immediately. Text Book reading must be encouraged and the students must be allowed to prepare the matter themselves.