EDUCATION experts have called for construction of more school libraries to promote reading culture among students and enable them cultivate broad range knowledge for high academic performance.
They said investment on libraries will help students to cultivate academic competence that would make them score high marks in examinations and have ability to translate high academic performance to real life problems solving, innovations and creativity.
Library’s Director for the Saint Augustine University of Tanzania’s (SAUT), Dr Zakayo Benard, in an interview with the Daily News yesterday noted that inadequate availability of libraries in schools, especially public schools makes it difficult for students and citizens at large to cultivate reading culture.
“Many schools in our country still lack well organized libraries, most schools have bookstores with textbooks arranged in a way not conducive for student studying, today many students rely on teachers’ notes,” Dr Bernard said.
“Presence of well-staffed libraries with organized latest learning text books will enable students to build up their reading culture, there is the relationship between poor performance and poor reading,” he said.
Mr. Bernard commended the government’s commitment to addressing classrooms shortage in secondary schools so as to put every student in the class, calling for a similar move for building school libraries.
A Lecturer for School of Education based at SAUT, George Helman said that teachers should be an engine for instilling a reading culture to students through applying the participatory teaching method that gives students a chance to share what they have while allowing them to search more materials so as to attain competence.
“A teacher is a key coach who should lure students to learning, persuade students to get into the library searching for more knowledge, skills and ideas,” he hinted.
Mwanza Regional Education officer (REO), Mr Martin Nkwabi, noted that the students’ reading culture can be influenced by the learning environment including efficient library availability.
Mr Nkwabi told the `Daily News’ that the Mwanza Region has a total of 320 libraries with a shortage of 718 libraries to meet the overall demand of 1038 libraries for both primary and secondary public schools.
However, he said the government is doing what it takes to ensure every newly built public school is accompanied by Information and Communication Technology rooms (TIC) which will act as the students’ reading culture catalyst enriched with up to the minute published academic resources.
Nyakabungo Secondary Head Teacher based in Nyamagana District, Ms Catherine Laswa commended the government for providing tablets to teachers as they will help them to obtain latest materials online and then share to the students.
