…says it is better to review, than impose ban
Stakeholders in the education sector have described ‘Queen Primer’ as an important text book in building the Nigerian literacy level and called on the National Assembly to stop the motion seeking it ban in schools.
The Country Director, Ipas Nigeria Health Foundation, Lucky Palmer, while speaking in Abuja, at a one-day roundtable meeting with stakeholders, to present findings from a research conducted on “Queen Primer”, said there has been a lot of misconception around the textbook and there is a need to educate people about it
According to Palmer, Queen Primer textbook remains a critical text for beginners and it is needed to improve the literacy level of both adult and young learners.
Palmer explained that imposing a ban on the book is not the solution, but need for the education stakeholders, institutions to take a critique the contents of the book and move for a review process.
” Today we just had a session based on motion to ban the book Queen premier book which we all know is meant to help to read and spell. so we wanted to be with the stakeholder to understand the rational behind it and how do we defend it from happening.
“And as you can see from today, there are a lot misconception about what we all know about the book. from our meeting it has agreed that there should be public sensitization on Queen imperia book which is over 70 years, it is not a new book and it is designed to help everybody read.
“When we all look at the illiteracy level n our country, we all now that this book remains critical for the better future we all have for our country,” said Palmer
Earlier in her presentation,
Doris Ikpeze, Partnerships and program manager, Ipas Nigeria, said it is outrightly wrong to take some words in a text without checking it’s meaning in the context of the sentence it was used, as it would lead to misinterpretion and misinformation.
According to her, Apart from the word ” Gay” there is no other word contentious in the book and it only appeared once in the over 50 pages book.
“So we don’t want some set of people to say the book should be banned without bringing out what these information really is. We should not just sit there and people bring out misinformation, and remain silent. There is a need to correct the misinformation that we have so that our lawmakers and policy makers would begin to understand what this is all about”.
Reacting to the proposed ban, Mrs Ogbonnaya Joy Chris, Deputy Director FCT Education Resource Centre, said Queen Primer, the book under contention has been in existence for over 90 years new book. she mentioned that the word ” Gay” was interpretated out of context of the sentence made, adding that English words make complete sense when used to make a sentence.
” At this level of these children, I wonder what they know about gay. The book is just teaching children how to pronounce and write. Children that have issues with reading and learning alphabets, Queen Primer is the first book we recommend for them and it has helped children over the years to learn to read and pronounce. Two three letter words. We in education resource center we are very particular about the books we recommend in the FCT. We are very careful about the moral content of any book we are using.”
The Minister of Education who was represented the CEO of National Library of Nigeria, Professor Chinwe Veronica Annunobi, said the timing of the meeting is appropriate, noting that the minister is at the verge of reviewing curriculum for basic and secondary school in line with his mandate.
The minister said, “In 2022 we bought so many Queen primer to aide our campaign, I guess that was what made it went viral because for you to read to learn pronunciation, you have to start with Queen primer so we bought it and distributed all over the nation. And we had literacy Centres all-over the local governments.
“My minister is aman of action, by the time I take how you all stakeholders feel about it to the Minister, and the way we at the National library feel about it, it think it would be factored into curriculum review.”
Queen Primer is very important in literacy because it is the only literary material available for beginners no ad we haven’t seen any indigenous literary material that is helping along that line.
“I am actually concerned that. Because these book was first published in 1888 it is in public domain. When reproduced . Our copy right ends at 70years, so it cam be reedited. If the word gay is so much we can reproduce for Nigerian students use.”