Open let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar:

With all due re­spect, I to­tal­ly dis­agree with your plan to give a lap­top to each SEA stu­dent. As an ed­u­ca­tor, I am in agree­ment that "chil­dren are our fu­ture" and should "ac­cess the world of knowl­edge and the world of the fu­ture" through the use of com­put­ers. This is a laud­able and apro­pos ed­u­ca­tion­al goal. How­ev­er, I wish to pro­pose what I feel can be done to pro­mote the use of com­put­ers for ed­u­ca­tion­al gain. For stu­dents to use com­put­ers to en­hance their ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits, a cul­ture of learn­ing through in­quiry needs to be fos­tered in schools.

This can be achieved by en­sur­ing that each school has low­er stu­dent-teacher ra­tios, by sup­ply­ing suf­fi­cient com­put­ers in labs that are well-main­tained and con­tin­u­al­ly up­dat­ed, and by pro­vid­ing in-ser­vice train­ing for teach­ers on how to pro­mote and fos­ter the in­quiry process. Such a process will re­quire stu­dents to ac­quire many skills that will as­sist them to be ef­fec­tive users, ap­pli­ca­tors and cre­ators of knowl­edge. Al­so, there is the nec­es­sary eth­i­cal frame­work with­in which stu­dents need to be in­cul­cat­ed. This needs to be done in the school set­ting un­der the guid­ance of a teacher.

With­out a de­vel­oped cul­ture in re­search, one can eas­i­ly see the lap­tops be­com­ing an­oth­er source of en­ter­tain­ment for the stu­dent and fam­i­ly mem­bers. Even with "fire­wall" pro­tec­tion, there are in­nu­mer­able ways by which a stu­dent might be able to use a com­put­er which would negate the no­ble goal of ac­cess­ing "the world of knowl­edge and the world of the fu­ture." Hav­ing com­put­ers in a cen­tralised lo­ca­tion such as a school will en­hance the track­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, main­tain­ing and up­dat­ing of the equip­ment.

The elec­tion promise of a lap­top to be giv­en to each SEA stu­dent needs to be re­vis­it­ed since it seems to be not on­ly im­prac­ti­cal but al­so ir­re­spon­si­ble. I be­lieve that par­ents would un­der­stand the com­mon-sense ap­proach of hav­ing com­put­ers (desk­tops and lap­tops) in well-fur­nished com­put­er labs in schools. This would be ben­e­fi­cial to all stu­dents over a longer pe­ri­od of time and at much less cost to the na­tion­al purse. Yes, give the stu­dents the ed­u­ca­tion­al tools they need, but do so in a wise man­ner.

Jen­nifer Rom­mens

Saskatchewan, Cana­da