Books & People turns 10 this year. What a ride it has been! I founded the company when I was 26. A decade and two children later, I am still on the mission to Craft Good Books That Build People. Right now, I am really overwhelmed with gratitude. It hasn’t been an easy decade, but it really has been a blessed one. And in our tenth year, for the first time, we will be foraying into a new subject matter for our Scan & Learn Series – Mathematics.
While the writing of the Primary 6 Maths workbooks took 3 years, It has taken my colleagues at Books & People and me a full decade to prepare ourselves to launch them. Anyone who has seen these books will realize quickly why such substantial development time was spent – there have never been any books quite like our workbooks and, chances are, there probably will never be. For one, our books are tech-powered. Furthermore, who would be as foolhardy as we are to spend a decade getting ready to publish any books like ours?
But we are such fools, and we do what we do because we love Singapore. Specifically, we love the young people of this tiny red dot. Everything we do at Books & People, we did it for them. While our country is renowned worldwide for our Singapore Maths, much could still be done to up our game at home.
The Scan & Learn math workbooks are designed to empower students to be self-directed learners. The books actually have a learning platform built into them. All the questions are tagged to online animated tutorials, and there are more than 500 questions with 500 animated tutorials that can be easily accessible via a mobile phone or a laptop. The books are carefully crafted to be learner-centred, and the online animated tutorials are clearly presented to guide students through complex questions with step-by-step approaches, models, and diagrams. Teachers will also find the practices in the workbooks to be structured, scaffolded, and suitable for daily use in school.
In Singapore, formal education is widely regarded as a crucial avenue for fostering greater equality in society. The Scan & Learn Series • Primary 6 workbooks are our love letters to Singapore as 9 August draws near. It is our dream that these paper-to-screen learning resources will allow students from all walks of life, regardless of their economic status, to be able to learn anywhere and at any time. The future is already here, but it is not evenly distributed yet. With the publication and distribution of the Scan & Learn Series, we hope that the future of our society will be one that is more egalitarian and one that empowers every student with the learning opportunities to achieve mastery of concepts.
Books & People‘s first decade has been a real adventure. I would like to thank my co-founders Tan Teck Chuan Darrin and Charissa Liew for hanging on in this journey. I would also like to honour Sri Gopalan Naidu, my co-writer and comrade, for believing in the vision and mission with me. This book would not be possible without him.
To all the teachers who have always believed in the work we do – thank you. I really hope in the next decade, we can continue to craft more books that will impact more people.
And of course, to my dearest wife, Ong Wei Lin Ruth, thank you for lending your voice to our video again; it is the support you lend me in life that truly mattered.
