PETALING JAYA: With the Primary School Standard Curriculum (KSSR) syllabus coming to an end, it is time to improve the quality of school textbooks, say parents.
There have been numerous complaints, usually about spelling and grammatical errors in the textbooks, but several factual errors have also been pointed out.
Parent Action Group for Education chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim has called on the Education Ministry to review the quality of textbooks as there have been too many mistakes.
“School textbooks should be flawless because they reflect the quality of our education system,” she said.
The review process takes into consideration learning resources such as textbooks and activity books.
One example of a mistake in the ministry’s school textbooks was highlighted last month by a tuition teacher, who pointed out that the diagrams on pages 156 and 159 of a Physics textbook for Form Five students were erroneous in depicting the direction of deflection of the galvanometer.
However, the Education Ministry maintained that there was no mistake, citing Lenz’s law about the direction of the electric current.
Prior to this, there was a complaint that a Form Five History reference book had used the wrong picture to depict Tun VT Sambanthan, one of the country’s founding fathers.The photograph used was that of EEC “Clough” Thuraisingham, colonial Malaya’s first education minister.
The ministry has pointed out that most of the mistakes pointed out on social media were found in reference books issued by private publishers, adding that the ministry only had jurisdiction over books that it published.
Secondary School Standard-based Curriculum (KSSM) Science textbook author Tho Lai Hoong said human error was unavoidable sometimes.
“We run through everything line by line with different guru pakar (expert teachers) and professors from local universities,” said Tho, who wrote Form Three and Form Five Science textbooks.
He stressed that textbook writers did their best to fact check and the screening process was very thorough, but mistakes might happen sometimes.
English language schoolbook writer Terry Lin said publishing companies usually expected high standards from the book authors.
“If a serious error is detected, it could end up with the whole batch of books being retracted or recalled from the market,” she said, adding that publishing companies vetted their candidates carefully to maintain the highest level of language and factual proficiency.“Usually in an advertisement for writers and editors, the requirements are a strong command of the language and being meticulous enough to catch mistakes,” Lin said.
However, Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education (Magpie) chairman Mak Chee Kin felt that the “experts” themselves should be vetted and called for more stringent quality control in the publication of textbooks.
“There needs to be a more transparent selection of experts to be on the review panel,” he said, adding that there shouldn’t be any careless mistakes.
Educationist and Universiti Malaya former professor of education Tan Sri Dr T. Marimuthu said textbook quality must be upheld as it could be the sole study material for students.
“Students from B40 families may not be able to afford other books. They can only rely on textbooks for information,” he said.
Marimuthu added that special attention should go towards ensuring that historical data were accurate in textbooks.
“Textbooks cannot give the wrong facts to our students, especially when it comes to historical events and people. If that happens, our young generation will be quoting the wrong dates and people,” he said.
He said textbook publishers should use tools such as a spellchecker to reduce errors.
“In the era of the Internet, it is not acceptable to have factual or spelling errors. How can we have textbooks with factual errors, spelling errors and photos being changed? This is not acceptable at all.”
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