The Minister for Secondary Education last Monday issued a directive aimed at putting some order in the use of textbooks in the nation's secondary schools and which have been a source of many problems for numerous parents and guardians.

As per the ministerial directive, of the prescribed textbooks, each school will have to select one textbook for each subject and that will have to run for at least three years. The decision is meant to check the indiscriminate selection of books which does not take into account any need for coherence.

In countless cases several books have been chosen for one subject, leading students to intractable problems. More so, the exercise has become of source of many corrupt practices usually involving the authors or publishing houses of the prescribed book.

The choice of books has never really been an objective exercise because those charged with the exercise never hesitate to "negotiate" with book sellers to ensure that their books are selected. In cases where there are numerous offers for the same purpose, the highest bidder usually carries the day and one can imagine how far the practice could grow in this rat race. The victims are evidently, the students in the first place.

They are thrown into the mercy of several books which, in many cases confuse, rather than enrich them. There are other obvious inconveniences from an academic point of view. For parents and guardians, the situation is even more complicated given the generalized cash-strapped situation of many parents in an economic environment characterized by runaway inflation.

One could have imagined a situation where more senior children of a household hand down their used textbook to the junior ones. But when books have to be changed time and time again, it becomes impossible to reduce costs. The educational milieu is one noted for the non-observance of texts, even when coming from an authority as high as the Minister.

Examples abound where official texts are openly flouted with no administrative response or punishment.It is therefore left to parents and all other abused stake-holders of the educational system to ensure that the ministerial directive is applied. It is the student's interest which is at stake and must be safeguarded