Anyone in the education industry and specialising in e-learning would know that spending millions to provide every primary school kid with a notebook computer in a state like Terengganu is the most idiotic, ridiculous idea.

From what I gather it is evident that the state wants to replace the use of textbooks with the notebooks. This means the textbooks would be in the form of soft copies. Has anybody ever told these morons that reading from the computer screen especially the little notebooks, is very tiring and troublesome?

This will also affect the eyesight of the child. Even if the battery life of the computer is longer, I cant imagine a class full notebook computers taking up precious space on the table top of the poor child. Every child would be spending half the time in class making sure the computer is safe.

We want to go high tech and provide notebooks but our classrooms are so low tech! They are cramped with 40 to 45 children in each classroom and the teacher struggles to reorganise the class for group activities.

E-learning is a fantastic idea but even tertiary institutes are struggling to provide Wifi hotspots and maintain uninterrupted internet facilities. We have multi-million dollar e-learning platforms in our universities but hardly 10 percent of the academic staff use this as it takes a very long time to prepare the e-learning materials and even more time to familiarise with the gadgets’ portals.

Many local academics are working towards promoting e-learning, online learning, Computer Assisted Language Learning etc. but our greatest problem is transferring the responsibility of managing the learning process to the students.

Our students, be it in primary, secondary or tertiary institution are very teacher-dependent and must be spoon fed. Before aping the West and providing computers to the students, we should do everything possible to wean them away from the teacher and be independent and interdependent. What is the point of giving an expensive fishing rod to a person, if he had not been taught how to fish?

Why import foreign language specialists?

While talking about this outrageous attempt to provide poor primary school children with notebooks, I also am baffled by the our honourable minister of education’s announcement that we will import 300-over English language specialist to examine our English Language Teachers (ELT).

Whatever for??? You don't need a foreign specialist to tell you the truth. We have been yelling till our mouths froth about the deplorable ELT situation in our schools. We only get the lowest of the lot applying to become teachers. Poor students make poor teachers. The English language teaching situation in our schools is critical. Many teachers are unable to write one paragraph in English without making numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Many of the teachers graduating from local Institutes of Education will not be able to converse coherently in English beyond five sentences. If the minister is in doubt about this, please do this. Have all the newly-minted TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) teachers from all our local universities write an essay (simultaneously otherwise they would employ someone to write for them) in English on a very simple subject and get some neutral people from the British Council or similar (local) institutes to examine them.

You will realise the true magnitude of the problem.

Since they are teachers, they are going to talk in English for the rest of their lives. Ask them to come forward to give a two-minute impromptu speech in English. You will see the kind of teachers we are producing. You do not need the services of foreign experts to tell you what is happening in your backyard.

Stop wasting any more money on incredible ideas and spend it on identifying qualified students and give them the much-needed inspiration to become good teachers. Be sincere in your efforts and you will see results.

My two cents worth.