Students in border areas are being supplied notebooks carrying scenes from films and titles of popular songs on the cover.

These “sub-standard” notebooks come without any print line and the shopkeepers have been selling these at high margins to the students. The covers of these notebooks are designed in a way to promote the sale of CDs or audio cassettes.

With the education set-up in the district already in doldrums, these notebooks are making students wean away from studies. Sale of such notebooks is indicative of the pitiable condition of education in state-run schools. Students can be seen singing ‘songs’ from “advertised” albums or discussing actors or actresses shown on the covers of these notebooks.

Various bodies of teachers and parents, including the Amritsar Vikas Manch, have sought a probe into the publication of such notebooks.

They maintain that the students should be educated about the significance of our rich heritage. Instead of titles of “cheap popular songs”, the printers and publishers should help promote endangered heritage buildings so that the students could be motivated to save these, they add.