Learning To Write On Banana Leaves

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30497, 20 July 1964, Page 2

Learning To Write On Banana Leaves

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) MANILA. One Philippines outback school has had to ask its pupils to practise their writing on banana leaves because they are too poor to buy paper.

This is reported by a correspondent writing from Kidapawan, in Cotabato province, to the “Philippines Free Press.”

He said that the Bagabos children at remote Kabilaw village had no school at all until five years ago when their parents built a oneroom shack. The roof of this leaked until a freak storm blew it down in 1962. Then municipal and provincial governments began contributing

funds to repair and expand the school. But the sole teacher found that some of the pupils were so poor that they could not afford to buy paper and pencils. So he showed them how to write on fresh green banana leaves.

They were busy at their scratchings when the district supervisor, Mr Jose Lacanaria, called to inspect the school some months ago. He gave the teacher £1 out of his own pocket to buy paper for them.

“This paper certainly went a long way towards supplying the needs of the pupils,” the “Free Press” correspondent said. “But what now? What about next year? Must the pupils go back to fresh banana leaves?”