The government’s goal of inculcating a sense of Qatar’s history in its young people has hit a new snag as private schools complain that the textbooks are just too costly, Gulf Times reports.

The complaint comes amid difficulty implementing new curriculum requirements mandated by the Supreme Education Council last year, which required all schools here to teach Qatari history.

Arabic and Islamic studies also must be taught if there are Qatari students in the school.

Of particular issue is the cost of a trial Qatari history textbook drafted by the SEC, which is priced at $21 (QR76) for primary school students and $55 (QR200) for eighth-graders and above, Gulf Times states.

The schools buy the books and are supposed to sell them to parents, but many simply don’t want them, it continues:

“It is not at all profitable for us to sell these books because many of the parents claimed they are too costly and some have refused to buy copies for their children and we do not have any power to enforce them,” a British school administrator lamented…

“We are incurring losses because we have a huge stack of the books still available for sale while many parents are already making photocopies for their children,” added the official of the school, which started offering the Qatari History this semester.

The newspaper adds that the SEC may require parents to buy original copies of the textbook next year.

Thoughts?

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