Students take recourse to self-help books

CHANDIGARH: There is no greater help than self-help.
Come examination time and the students seem to give a new meaning to the credo.
What with marks, scored at any cost, becoming the ultimate motivating force for students, the use of tools like self-help books, guides, sample question papers and guess papers has been on the rise in recent years. It does not matter whether the student has been able to grasp the concept in classroom, but what does is the need to post good scores in the examinations.
"The students are increasingly taking to the use of help books and guides.The sale of these books is almost 60 per cent of that of the regular course books," says Rakesh Puri of Modern Book Shop, Sector 22. The volume of sales increases sharply in the months leading to the examinations. The books are specially popular among students taking their board exams.
What contributes to the popularity of these books is the examination centric approach adopted by the ''writers''. The books are known to present the course material totally from the examination point of view.
And what is more, some of the better quality help books keep in view the trends of the question papers in the recent years and the expected questions based on these. And keeping their popularity in view, these seem to have succeeded in solving the examination puzzle to some extent.
Says Rajwinder Gill, a student of DAV Senior Secondary School, Sector 8, " A majority of the students are using this kind of study material in their preparations for the examinations. Nobody wants to be left out."
Students say that the help books, apart from helping them make up for the lessons skipped in the class room also assists them in adopting an examination centric approach.
"Sometimes the teachers are not able to explain the concept properly and some of the other topics are simply beyond our understanding. These books help us in simply mugging up the answers to some of the expected questions related to these areas," says another student.
The teachers, however, present a different view point. "Whatever we tell them is also given in these books. They don’t pay attention in the class room and later turn to these books near the exams," says Mohini, a teacher from one of the city schools. It is not only the mediocre students who take recourse to these books, but also those who excel in studies.
"The competition is too much. More than anything else, in case of brilliant students, these books give the satisfaction of not leaving anything out while preparing for the exams," says Lokinder Chauhan, a parent.