The moth­er apol­o­gised to the book­store own­ers, her loved ones, and the na­tion. She touched the hearts of some of us with her re­morse­ful words, in a way that some­one who had stolen from oth­ers shouldn’t have moved us.

Not to­day, when we fear walk­ing down the street, leav­ing an ATM with cash, or just go­ing any­where. Her re­pen­tant words struck a gen­uine­ly apolo­getic note, such that one felt not blame­ful but deeply sor­ry for her. Ini­tial­ly, you may have been tempt­ed to say, what if she hadn’t been caught? Would she have done it again, or would she have felt the tor­ment of guilt? But then, in the news­pa­per re­ports, you read that she was trem­bling in fear when she grabbed the books, val­ued at around $2,150, from the counter. That is not the kind of un­con­scionable be­hav­iour of rank-and-file thieves and oth­er crim­i­nals, tor­tur­ing, killing, and maim­ing, or of those cor­rupt peo­ple with no com­punc­tion about bleed­ing the trea­sury.

This sto­ry evokes so many emo­tions, as do the many oth­ers about good and lov­ing par­ents who feel pain for their chil­dren—emo­tions from com­pas­sion to anger to re­flec­tions about cast­ing the first stone. It evokes thoughts about the book-sell­er and many oth­er busi­ness own­ers who labour to build busi­ness­es, em­ploy peo­ple and con­tribute to the econ­o­my, and whose prices in­crease to the dis­ad­van­tage of all of us, be­cause of the high cost of se­cu­ri­ty. And what about all the oth­er par­ents and guardians catch­ing their nen­nens to make ends meet?

Every year the lin­ger­ing is­sue is the as­tro­nom­i­cal cost of text­books. Some may im­me­di­ate­ly rush to judge­ment; they would for­give the strug­gling moth­er who act­ed in a mo­ment of weak­ness, and blame the book pub­lish­ers, au­thors, whole­salers, and re­tail­ers.

There are valid rea­sons why book prices are high and in­creas­ing an­nu­al­ly, in­clud­ing the cost of pro­duc­tion, mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, ship­ping and in­sur­ance, au­thor roy­al­ties and li­cens­ing fees, and oth­er eco­nom­ic fac­tors of in­fla­tion, ex­change rates, and book re­turn poli­cies. It is not sim­ply a mat­ter of high mar­gins on high-vol­ume sales. That may be so in some in­stances, and there may be mo­nop­oly pric­ing, but this is a very small mar­ket­place. Books here are not stan­dard­ised. Con­se­quent­ly, it is not pos­si­ble to get economies of scale to bring down unit costs.

There are oth­er stark re­al­i­ties. Writ­ing text­books in­volves sig­nif­i­cant com­mit­ment, time, and en­er­gy. This costs mon­ey. Au­thors’ works are pro­tect­ed by copy­right, and sec­ond-hand sales of used text­books, book rentals, and pho­to­copy­ing texts rep­re­sent a loss of in­come for them. These re­al­i­ties are prime dri­vers of the ris­ing cost of text­books. This hap­pens in all mar­kets where gov­ern­ments don’t have agree­ments with pub­lish­ers and au­thors to pro­vide books at mar­gin­al cost, so while deal­ers may prof­it from sec­ond-hand book sales and book rental in­come, au­thors and pub­lish­ers do not. That feeds the fa­mil­iar mul­ti-edi­tion book mar­ket.

Pub­lish­ers will pro­duce new edi­tions of the same pri­ma­ry texts an­nu­al­ly, some­times with min­i­mal up­dates of con­tent, but with new num­ber­ing and chap­ters, which vir­tu­al­ly in­val­i­dates pre­vi­ous edi­tions. Some­times, the up­dat­ed edi­tions may not im­pact learn­ing and teach­ing out­comes more than the old­er ones. Teach­ers of­ten don’t use all the texts in a book and they use sup­ple­men­tary ma­te­r­i­al from oth­er sources. Of course, syl­labus­es are not sta­t­ic, so there are gen­uine rea­sons for up­dates, as will be the case with ge­og­ra­phy top­ics and cli­mate change stud­ies.

What are the op­tions? Some schools have stu­dent-man­aged sec­ond-hand book sales dur­ing the hol­i­days, and some al­so pro­duce up-to-date notes on new de­vel­op­ments for a small fee. Thus, books from pre­vi­ous years can be used by new stu­dents, while in­come from sec­ond-hand sales en­ables stu­dents to buy books for the new term. Some stu­dents do­nate their books. These ini­tia­tives come from with­in the school com­mu­ni­ty and ease the bur­den on par­ents.

Why should text­books be a big is­sue in this age of AI tech­nolo­gies? There are com­pelling rea­sons for com­bin­ing books and on­line op­tions. COVID should have pre­pared the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to re­view the tons of on­line CXC and oth­er cur­ric­u­lar sources and come up with a uni­ver­sal plan for mak­ing on­line learn­ing in schools a pro­duc­tive and es­sen­tial as­pect of ed­u­ca­tion. This would ef­fec­tive­ly deal with stu­dents with no in­ter­net ac­cess.

The Gov­ern­ment should re­view the book grant and oth­er cost­ly sys­tems and con­sid­er ne­go­ti­at­ing with au­thors for an al­ter­na­tive, fi­nanc­ing copy­right pro­duc­tion of books and work­sheets for place­ment in the pub­lic do­main at mar­gin­al cost.

The Gov­ern­ment can al­so ne­go­ti­ate with aca­d­e­mi­cians to pro­duce pa­pers with up-to-date in­for­ma­tion, al­so placed in the pub­lic do­main, which teach­ers and stu­dents can source free of charge. A par­al­lel sys­tem would there­fore op­er­ate; the state/pub­lish­er part­ner­ship with books and pa­pers in the pub­lic do­main, and the stan­dard copy­right sys­tem for spe­cif­ic texts through book­stores.

It is worth con­sid­er­ing en­sur­ing a win/win for all; the au­thor’s roy­al­ty in­come would then not be de­pen­dent sole­ly on sales. Lo­cal pub­lish­ers would be guar­an­teed a re­li­able in­come in a gov­ern­ment arrange­ment, and book re­tail­ers should still ben­e­fit from low­er-cost pro­duc­tions, as well as sales of stan­dard copy­right text. Par­ents would pay low­er prices for spe­cif­ic books and get free texts. It should boost the au­thor­ship of text­books and the pub­lish­ing in­dus­try. Ro­bust ten­der and au­dit pro­ce­dures would be nec­es­sary to sup­port such a sys­tem.

Oth­er op­tions in­clude col­lab­o­rat­ing with the lo­cal book in­dus­try to es­tab­lish a sub­scrip­tion-based SEA and CXC stud­ies plat­form. Teach­ers and stu­dents would have ac­cess to a dig­i­tal li­brary of text­books and pa­pers. For CXC, this could be a Cari­com ini­tia­tive. Sys­tems al­ready ex­ist, and there’s no need to rein­vent the wheel.

Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion has of­ten been pre­sent­ed as an op­tion, be­cause it could re­duce unit costs if all schools used the same books. How­ev­er, one size nev­er fits all, and schools must have the op­tion to se­lect the books that they be­lieve best fa­cil­i­tate stu­dent learn­ing.

But why text­books in the age of AI and on­line learn­ing re­sources? Books are still nec­es­sary for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed learn­ing. Chil­dren as­sim­i­late in­for­ma­tion at dif­fer­ent rates, and books pro­vide con­tent for stu­dents with dif­fer­ent learn­ing abil­i­ties.

The ex­er­cis­es and worked ex­am­ples in books are con­ve­nient for set­ting home­work and test­ing for un­der­stand­ing. Pa­per texts may stim­u­late cre­ative think­ing, where­as tech­nol­o­gy tends to pro­vide im­me­di­ate an­swers. Ap­pro­pri­ate maths text­books help stu­dents and teach­ers through the syl­labus. Books re­main ex­cel­lent for lit­er­a­ture, build­ing com­pre­hen­sion skills and as­sist­ing teach­ers to re­duce prepa­ra­tion time.

Text­books still have greater depth; they elab­o­rate, ex­plain, and clar­i­fy top­ics, and are less harsh on the brain and mind than screens. Books will be around for a long time. (Read re­search by Prof Barn­a­by Lenon, Dean of Ed­u­ca­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Buck­ing­ham).

There is no quick-fix, fool­proof sys­tem; ed­u­ca­tion re­quires in­no­v­a­tive think­ing to re­solve prob­lems. Strate­gies, as in­di­cat­ed above, must be well thought out be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.

It is time for pro­duc­tive so­lu­tions, time for the Gov­ern­ment to re­view how it spends so­cial ser­vices and ed­u­ca­tion dol­lars. Let’s get our ideas to­geth­er.