It was to have been a pleasant Saturday afternoon outing with my other half to the National Planetarium at the National Space Agency in Jalan Perdana, Kuala Lumpur. Instead we experienced a rather unsavoury but typically Cronesian encounter.

We had bought tickets to watch two documentaries - Mystery of the Red Planet and Solar Max - at the planetarium theatrette.

For both screenings, the auditorium was packed with boys and girls obviously on a class excursion and accompanied by their teachers. The shorter film, Mystery of the Red Planet, was presented by our own science, technology and innovations ministry and was very much dumbed down.

Its Sesame Street-like approach was excruciating for us two adults but never mind, we rationalised it was, tailored for a young audience and would probably be educational for the students present.

However, did the students - in their mid-teens, judging from their turquoise baju kurung uniform - benefit from watching it?

We think not as most of the time, the narration was drowned by hooting, catcalls, wolf-whistles and sporadic clapping, deliberately done to disrupt the show. It was the boys who were rowdy but the girls played along too.

Some smart alecks with torchlights and laser pointer keychains also shone beams of light with a novelty pattern (in this case, as red butterfly) intermittently onto the dome ceiling, onto which the film was projected.

Not only was their action inconsiderate and distracting to the scant few interested members of the audience, it showed a tremendous lack of respect for the culture of knowledge acquisition.

It was not an environment where knowledge-seeking students listened with rapt attention. The general inattentiveness led us to conclude that the students could not possibly have grasped the content of the documentary.

The level of English (simplified as it was) was beyond them. We shudder to think that among the audience that day could be our next generation of political leaders and captains of crony industry.

On another note, the longer film Solar Max was decent enough if not for the unfortunate muffling of the narration.

But if you thought the audience was bad, the planetarium management was a crying shame in comparison. Upon buying our tickets, we were given a complimentary mouse pad bearing a blurb-synopsis of another documentary Mystery of the Maya slated for a later screening in the afternoon.

I reproduce the text (below) verbatim , in all its shining glory of bad grammar, erroneous spelling and atrocious punctuation.

'Mystery of the Maya

Maya are groups of people live between Mexico and Guantamala. They have been there since 11,000 years ago before century. Living in harmony among them with highly civilization on their period. These amazing civilization includes calendar system, astronomy, mathematics and traded.

This film will bring the audience together with John Lyod Stephens to the journey of Maya civilization. Most of the Maya people staying in cities. They were under control by King Pacal that follow rules name Palenque.

Atronomy; cally Maya believed that Earth were a flat four corners. Each corner has different colour. Movement of planets, Moon, Sun and stars give them a lot of knowledge. The information they accumulated were then converted to annual calendar.

The Maya writing sytem is considered (*by archaeologist) to be most sophisticated system ever developed in their period. About 800 symbols were used to express their message. They carved on woods, lime stone and pottery.

Understanding of symbols was developed in the calculation which later were called mathematics. 12 were symbolized by 2 straight line with 2 dots.

Finally,in the end a question, will arise. What had happenned actually that resulted in the abandonment of Maya's civilization around 900AD? What had caused the kings to lose their kingdom along with their honour. what make them turn to farmers.

E-mel: [email protected] Laman web: http://www.angkasa.gov.my'

Who in the Kementerian Sains, Teknologi dan Inovasi wrote the sorry text above? With these people from the ministry in the role of educators, I shudder to think about the products of their teaching. After all, they were certainly 'innovative' with the English language.

I also have a little piece of constructive advice for Science, Technology and Innovations Minister Jamaluddin Jarjis.

I hear that your ministry has been allocated a sum to send a Cronesia Boleh space tourist err astronaut, to the black beyond. I strongly believe that this money would be better spent on the ground.

I also recommend that you donate a big slice of your ministry's budget to improve the understanding of science in our national schools because, if these chest-thumping and ignorant youngsters represent our country's future, it will not only be the non-bumis who will be immigrating in droves to faraway lands.