With advances in technological innovations, new inequalities have appeared, which have created new social, educational, political, and economic gaps in societies. This, has changed the narrative, thus forcing many especially youngsters to use laptops and other mobile gadgets to make online researches among a host of others.
In today’s edition, a Gambia youth activist has renewed call for the revisiting of the civic education system in schools in a bid to promote patriotism and good governance.
The young activist observed that the country’s education curriculum department needs to revisit and engage stakeholders to be able to gather more input into civic education and train teachers who are Gambian to teach the subject efficiently.
This call is not only timely but important if the Gambia is to attain any meaningful headway as far as quality education is concerned.
A case in point is that most of our students don’t even know why they are doing the subject. Students needs to know key components regarding democracy, governance, politics, citizenship, civic participation and civic responsibilities.
It is observed that public libraries act as a vital force in the promotion of basic human rights which value “the right to know, to freedom of opinion, to seek and receive information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
In fact, in some African towns and cities, public libraries used to be inundated with students and researchers. Today, in visiting most of these libraries, one would realise that it is not what is used to be, as most people now prefer or resort to researching with laptops and mobile gadgets, than going to public libraries.
People need information that they can trust as “information needs cannot be met by databases and electronic delivery systems which are geared towards meeting the needs of the educated urban upper and middle classes”.
Furthermore, many traditional societies based on oral tradition need different services that libraries can provide by adapting to their social and cultural contexts.
Thus, we call on government and other NGOs to support our public libraries and help promote the culture of reading among youngsters. By supporting this worthy cause would greatly help in bringing back the past glory in library education in the country.