?When I first heard of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's elec­tion promise that every child who wrote the SEA ex­am would be giv­en a free lap­top com­put­er, my first re­ac­tion was why? What was the think­ing be­hind it?

What would they do with them? Play games? Lime on Face­book and Twit­ter? Watch videos and lis­ten to mu­sic on YouTube? Vis­it chat rooms, pre­tend­ing to be adults where they will meet adults pre­tend­ing to be chil­dren? Vis­it un­de­sir­able Web sites for kicks or en­ter­tain­ment? How many would use it to im­prove their vo­cab­u­lary? I can­not imag­ine that these chil­dren would be ex­pect­ed to take their lap­tops to school for that would just get in the way of their nor­mal school work. Even if they did, it would cre­ate an un­nec­es­sary di­vide be­tween the Form 1 stu­dents with lap­tops and the rest of the school with­out. We could al­so ex­pect to see old­er stu­dents bul­ly­ing the young ones to use their com­put­ers and I am cer­tain that many would be stolen. Would their break times be spent in­stant-mes­sag­ing their friends and surf­ing the Net rather than on some more whole­some ac­tiv­i­ty, like play­ing sports? So tak­ing them to school would be a bad idea all round.

I have many friends and ac­quain­tances who teach in high school and many com­plain about the very low lev­els of lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy among Form 1 stu­dents (oth­ers as well). (I just heard that TTUTA plans to meet with Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Tim Gopeesingh to dis­cuss the high rate of il­lit­er­a­cy in the na­tion's schools as a mat­ter of ur­gency.) Is it re­al­ly such a good idea to give stu­dents, many of whom could bare­ly read and write, a lap­top un­less there was some con­comi­tant pro­gramme that will help them to use the com­put­er to im­prove their read­ing and writ­ing skills? I'm sor­ry, but giv­ing a lap­top to some­one mere­ly be­cause he/she at­tend­ed pri­ma­ry school and at­tained the age of 11 has no ed­u­ca­tion­al mer­it oth­er than the good deed of giv­ing some­one a gift. The irony here is that all these stu­dents would be leav­ing their pri­ma­ry schools armed with their own lap­tops while the schools them­selves have none.

Hav­ing made the promise, I sup­pose Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is oblig­ed to keep it but please let it be a one-time of­fer. Wouldn't it have been much bet­ter to spend the mon­ey on com­put­ers for the schools where many more could ben­e­fit? But com­put­ers alone would not solve any­thing. On the face of it, putting com­put­ers in schools sounds like a good idea. But there are many schools in the coun­try with well-equipped com­put­er labs which are hard­ly ever used for ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es. Some are not used at all. Rea­son? The is­sue of staffing was nev­er prop­er­ly ad­dressed. In some schools, a teacher would be asked to see about the lab in ad­di­tion to his/her nor­mal teach­ing du­ties. This may get the ball rolling in the very short term but is un­ac­cept­able as a pol­i­cy.

Un­less prop­er­ly trained and qual­i­fied staff are re­cruit­ed for the sole pur­pose of man­ag­ing the lab and train­ing reg­u­lar teach­ing staff in the use of ap­pro­pri­ate ed­u­ca­tion­al and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty soft­ware, com­put­er labs in schools would just con­tin­ue to be an un­re­ward­ing, ex­pen­sive ex­per­i­ment.

?Dr Noel Kalicha­ran

Se­nior Lec­tur­er

Com­put­er Sci­ence