Ni­rad Tewarie

The in­ten­si­ty of the on­go­ing de­bate over whether the Gov­ern­ment should dis­trib­ute lap­tops to stu­dents en­ter­ing Form I is sur­pris­ing but re­veal­ing. This pro­pos­al was part of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's 2007 and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's 2010 man­i­festos, so it is not new yet, on the eve of its im­ple­men­ta­tion, every Mor­gan, William and Aruna is sud­den­ly voic­ing an opin­ion. The fact that peo­ple are on­ly now tak­ing the ini­tia­tive se­ri­ous­ly seems to sug­gest that few peo­ple ex­pect­ed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to de­liv­er on its elec­tion promise. That they are do­ing so is an im­por­tant step for­ward in the de­vel­op­ment of gov­er­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, most, if not all, of those who are against the ini­tia­tive can af­ford lap­tops and there­fore have the choice of buy­ing or not buy­ing them for their chil­dren.

This is dis­turb­ing and reeks of the 'benev­o­lent pa­ter­nal­ism' that the peo­ple of the de­vel­op­ing (for­mer colonies) world are forced to en­dure from the de­vel­oped world (for­mer/cur­rent colonis­ers). Es­sen­tial­ly, that line of think­ing is that those who have, are wealth­i­er and of the 'rul­ing class' should guide the de­vel­op­ment and de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the en­gage­ment, ex­po­sure and op­por­tu­ni­ties for those from the 'low­er class­es'. As we fast ap­proach our 50th year of In­de­pen­dence (2012) we must not al­low this kind of think­ing to dom­i­nate our so­ci­ety and stymie the open­ing up of op­por­tu­ni­ties for all our peo­ple. Com­put­er ac­cess for all is a great idea. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of lap­tops to school chil­dren as a step to­wards this is a worth­while ini­tia­tive.

Some ar­gue that we should not give our chil­dren lap­tops be­cause they will get ex­posed to pornog­ra­phy, among oth­er things. By that log­ic, we should nev­er build a road be­cause some peo­ple will use it to go to a broth­el or a strip club. The chil­dren whose par­ents are un­like­ly to su­per­vise the use of their lap­tops are at risk of get­ting in­volved in more dan­ger­ous and detri­men­tal ac­tiv­i­ties than look­ing at porn. To con­tin­ue the il­log­i­cal ar­gu­ment, if so­ci­ety had a choice to put a child in a sit­u­a­tion where s/he had on­ly two choic­es: look at porn or join a gang, which would the ma­jor­i­ty choose? The sec­ond shaky ar­gu­ment is that not every­one who re­ceives the com­put­er will have ac­cess to the In­ter­net or, worse, have elec­tric­i­ty in their homes.

True, but can the com­put­er not be use­ful with­out be­ing con­nect­ed to the In­ter­net 24/7? Does the com­put­er not have a bat­tery which will al­low it be used for sev­er­al hours with­out be­ing plugged in­to an elec­tri­cal sock­et? Can the Gov­ern­ment not ap­proach In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers (ISPs) to con­sid­er giv­ing ac­cess to stu­dents from low-in­come homes? The an­swer to all these ques­tions is yes. The most valid set of con­sid­er­a­tions seems to be re­gard­ing the process of im­ple­men­ta­tion. Few would dis­agree that the poli­cies re­gard­ing the use of the ma­chines in the class­room, main­te­nance, in­stal­la­tion of soft­ware and se­cu­ri­ty need to be clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed and en­forced. More­over, the da­ta from around the world which shows that the stu­dents from low-in­come fam­i­lies ac­tu­al­ly per­form worse aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly when pro­vid­ed with com­put­ers must be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and de­lib­er­ate, con­sis­tent mea­sures should be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure that this pat­tern is not re­peat­ed here.

On the flip­side, giv­ing lap­tops to chil­dren who know that their fam­i­ly can­not af­ford to buy the de­vices, will im­me­di­ate­ly send a mes­sage that they (the chil­dren)are im­por­tant. While in many cas­es, the chil­dren's aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance may not im­prove just be­cause they have a com­put­er, us­ing the com­put­ers will open new path­ways in their brains. It will fire up dif­fer­ent parts of their imag­i­na­tion. As a tool–for like a pro­trac­tor or book or cal­cu­la­tor a com­put­er is just a tool–it pro­vides a dif­fer­ent medi­um to en­gage the chil­dren, and in so many ways– both for par­ents who have com­put­er ac­cess and for teach­ers. True, there are risks. Chil­dren will po­ten­tial­ly be ex­posed to preda­tors while they are in the per­ceived safe­ty of their homes and we must deal with those po­ten­tial risks.

Sure the $45M could have been used on oth­er things but if sup­port­ed cor­rect­ly, em­pow­er­ing our chil­dren by putting them on the in­for­ma­tion su­per high­way is like­ly to bring ben­e­fits which we can­not even imag­ine to­day. For there to be ad­e­quate sup­port for this, the Gov­ern­ment should en­sure that tech­ni­cal sup­port is avail­able for the stu­dents at least un­til 10pm so that if they run in­to prob­lems while do­ing their school­work, all is not lost (lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly). Sec­ond­ly, they should con­sid­er de­vel­op­ing a com­put­er re­pair pro­gramme for tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al stu­dents with a plan to in­crease skills so that the coun­try can de­vel­op the ca­pac­i­ty to move up the val­ue chain.

For the ini­tia­tive to be ef­fec­tive though, it must be com­bined with a num­ber of oth­er ini­tia­tives such as cur­ricu­lum re­form, more so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port for stu­dents and an in­cen­tive scheme to re­ward good teach­ers (not just the ones whose stu­dents do well in ex­ams). What would not be good is if we wait for every­thing to be per­fect to start re­form­ing and, hope­ful­ly, rev­o­lu­tion­al­is­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. Do­ing noth­ing will be more cost­ly than ex­pos­ing a few young peo­ple to things that might not be de­sir­able and hav­ing to re­place some dam­aged or stolen com­put­ers.