Phones and tablets are not a child’s en­e­my, says T&T’s top Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) stu­dent Saiesh Ram­per­sad.

He be­lieves the cur­tail­ing of tech­nol­o­gy is not the an­swer to achiev­ing aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess.

Ram­per­sad was speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Par­ents Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion lead­er­ship sym­po­sium held at the Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day.

The stu­dent, who at­tend­ed the Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Vedic School (GMVS) in Aranguez, said phones and tablets helped to broad­en his mind and, if used ef­fec­tive­ly, can con­tribute to a child’s de­vel­op­ment. He is now in Form One at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas.

“The type of world we live in to­day does not make it easy for chil­dren. We have smart tele­vi­sion, smart­phone and tablets. I was nev­er de­nied and I do not be­lieve that the elim­i­na­tion of these types of tech­nol­o­gy is the an­swer. Tech­nol­o­gy it­self can open a child’s mind to dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences and prospects if used prop­er­ly. The ques­tion is who is re­spon­si­ble for mon­i­tor­ing and reg­u­lat­ing the use of these items?” Ram­per­sad asked.

Say­ing he hoped the ques­tion could be ad­dressed in the lead­er­ship sym­po­sium. Ram­per­sad said if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, he would have spent all day play­ing on his phone and tablet.

How­ev­er, he said his par­ents—Dr Ram­c­hand Ram­per­sad and Rhon­da Ram­per­sad—mon­i­tored his us­age of tech­nol­o­gy.

“My par­ents watched movies and played games with us so they al­ways had con­trol over how the tech­nol­o­gy was used. They did not present tech­nol­o­gy as an en­e­my but they used it. This is not to say they did not hide the tablets and phones from us reg­u­lar­ly. He said tak­ing away the tech­nol­o­gy was used as an in­cen­tive to get him to im­prove on his per­for­mance.

Ram­per­sad said he was in­volved in ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, play­ing the tabla and the pi­ano. He said his par­ents al­ways en­sured that his school projects were com­plet­ed and his home­work was done.

He said he al­ways loved to read and even when he was in his moth­er’s womb, she read to him.

“Read­ing ex­pands your vo­cab­u­lary, im­proves spelling and gives you great ideas to write about,” Ram­per­sad added.

He said it was a known fact that his fa­ther wrote SEA books and he was used to test the ef­fec­tive­ness of the books. How­ev­er, while some may say he had an un­fair ad­van­tage be­cause of this, his fa­ther was gen­er­ous enough to sup­ply all schools and stu­dents with the text­books so that every­one had ac­cess to them.

Ram­per­sad al­so said his achieve­ment of at­tain­ing a per­fect score in the ex­am was not on­ly his suc­cess but the suc­cess of every­one who con­tributed to his de­vel­op­ment.

He al­so said prepa­ra­tion for SEA does not be­gin in Stan­dard Five. He said all as­pects of the ex­am must be cov­ered by the end of Stan­dard Four and the re­main­ing time in Stan­dard Five should be used to im­prove on weak points.

Ram­per­sad was giv­en a smart­phone for his suc­cess in the ex­am­i­na­tion.