nilam

There is this program in school called Nilam....been around for past ten years or more maybe. It's to encourage students to read. Two activities that is done is my school....Laluan 'Iqra (five minutes reading at the assembly ground) and filling in the Nilam summary book.

Many years ago when students were asked to observe Laluan 'Iqra....they just whipped out any books from their bag and read. I used to make my students read their History text...told them when I walk into the assembly ground; I want to see them holding their History text.

Last year, the students were told not to read the texts during this time but non-academic books like fictions, novels etc. Recently there was some hue and cry over students reading x-rated books which was later confiscated by a teacher and some misunderstanding came about which involved parents. So now they want to do away with novels....students can only read newspaper cuttings....laminated and copies made according to number of students in each class.

What crap????? What is the purpose of Nilam? To encourage students to read......so what if the book has a few lines of hugging and kissing? Some of the students know more than the narrow-minded teachers. This will really kill the interest in reading especially in students who are already not interested in reading at all. Then again I see many students who hold really good books and now we are going to tell them they can't bring such books to school anymore.

The second activity....filling in the Nilam summary book. When I was a student in a Convent School, this was already part of our English exercise. Every week we need to write a summary in our book and hand in to the teacher. I love writing summaries as I love to read. There is so much to share and tell the teacher about what I have read and what I think of the book.

Guess what the students do nowadays....they copy the synopsis at the back of the books in the library and passed it of as books which they have read. Then they passed their Nilam books around and other friends will copy the synopsis from them. I have checked Nilam books that are copies of each other. Once I saw a student with a synopsis of Pride and Prejudice. When I questioned her about the book, she could not answer me.

Then the smarter students create their own stories. They come out with fantastic titles....write a short story line and put random names (maybe a combination of their friends' names) as the author of their imaginary books.

Wonderful wonderful generation we are creating. And at the end of each month the language teachers like me will diligently collect the Nilam exercise books....run through the summaries and count the number of books each students have read and key them into the system in the computer; all the time being fully aware that we are crapping away. (There are many students who really read many books but can't be bothered to write synopsis....)

Do teachers in other countries do such things as this I wonder?