Books in our students' hands

There is a rule that we all know in our country. “I you are a Lebanese person then you are the smartest in the world”. But this is actually not true. If we were so smart, then one might ask why we have nothing to create. Why we don’t bake our bread? If we take a look to Lebanese schools, especially the private schools we will see that most of them use books from other countries to teach math, physics, biology, literature, and so on, The only Lebanese book that all schools use without even thinking is the history book. But in all other subjects you cannot see this uniqueness in using books in all the Lebanese schools. Why this huge diversity in the books that we use in our schools? Maybe no body trusts the Lebanese curriculum. Once might say that our curriculum should be changed to meet the needs of our students. But in some cases using our books much better that using other books that are translated from different languages, because in some cases the teachers put some very weak books in their students hands without knowing what they are doing. This happens a lot because they do not criticize the books that they use.  

In the Lebanese Educational system course I used to criticize the biology book for grade 8.  This book is formed of two parts, the first part is about Earth and Life science and the second part is about immunology. If you take a quick look at this book you will see that it is well organized and it can be used in to guide both teachers and students in the instructional process. Because each chapter starts with an introductory page, that describes the content o f the chapter. Another page contain the questions that will be discussed. The activities are full of colored pictures and they are organized in a way that can be seen to be analyzed. But when I started looking deeply in the book I was very surprised because I had discovered a lot of unaccepted errors. For example: 1)The table of contents is reversed in this book it begins at page 7 and ends at page 6.

2)Part two of the book that talks about immunology should form the first part of the

 book since the concepts of this part is more important than "Environment and

 health".

3)In the preface stage the authors introduced the book by saying "It represents the new

spirit and tends of the new curriculum that suggests for this class the study of human

 reproduction, immunity and a modern approach to geology."

But this book does not talk about human reproduction.

4)There are three pictures on the cover page help in knowing the content of the book.

but the first picture represents the fertilization of female egg to show that the book

will talk about human reproduction . but the is no part talks about this idea.

5)Some sentences in the book are written in French. For example, Piton de la fournaise  

(Doc A2, page 42) and injection de se`rum antite^/tanique (Doc c, page 133)

6)There are some activities that their goals are not mentioned at the beginning of the

 chapter.

7)There are chapters that need rearrangement. For example in chapter 8, activity one

 that talks about blood and lymph, shows microscopic observation about the type of

the blood cells (WBC and RBC). Activity 3 that talks about participant in immune

 reactions, shows how we can differentiate between types of lymphocytes (WBC)

according to the shape of their nuclei by showing them under the microscope, then

there is a document that shows how these cells circulate in the body. While activity 2

 talks about the identity marker and the purpose of graft rejection and blood

 agglutination. So the arrangement should be: activity 1, activity3 then activity 2.

Drinking Water

The drinking of water has sometimes been promoted as a way to improve learning, usually in the basis that even small amounts of dehydration can reduce cognitive abilities. There are very few studies investigating the effect of dehydration or our ability to think. However a resent adult study has shown that drinking water when not thirsty can also diminish cognitive ability. In fact we know that our brains possess a sophisticated system by which we become thirsty when our bodies, including our brains, need water. So encouraging children to drink water when they are thirsty may be a more sensible approach than constantly monitoring the amount of water they consume. Exercise and hot whether are the exceptions to this rule, when there is evidence that children's own monitoring systems are less reliable and they should be encouraged to drink in order to avoid dehydration.