Dear Editor,
I refer to Dr. Luncheon’s letter in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek touting his govt’s OLPF programme.
I am a Guyanese. I live in New York. I work for NYC’s Bd. of Education. I currently teach certification courses providing basic skills in computers: Internet and Computing Core Certification; Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Certifications (Word, Access, Excel, Powerpoint).
These courses are part of the curriculum that students must pass and obtain industry-wide recognized certificates before they graduate with their technology-endorsed HS diploma. All middle- and High Schools in NYC are fully equipped with several computer labs. All students in the public school system have access to the labs and are taking courses in what Roger Luncheon calls ICT, Information and Computer Technology.
Why is ICT education important? Simply because without ICT training you cannot function in the workplace – and it will be difficult to get a job. Without it you are not prepared to enter the job market.
Roger Luncheon’s letter does not explain how his government is planning to provide ICT training for students currently enrolled in the public school system.
Have you equipped the schools with computer labs? How many schools have labs? Do these basic courses form part of the curriculum? Are there teachers trained to teach these courses? On the staff of every HS throughout the country?
Roger Luncheon’s letter is a manifest, bald-faced, empty propaganda letter. Roger Luncheon is the de facto Prime Minister of Guyana.
I am amazed that when this OLPF project was discussed at the Cabinet level,
Education Minister Baksh did not make the argument to provide the schools with desktop computers, and also for funding to develop an ICT curriculum for the High Schools. (Or did he?)
What is the idea of government providing 90,000 families with a free laptop? What would these families do with a free laptop – internet shopping, create a page on facebook, send emails to families and friends living abroad?
What is the logic of providing families with a free laptop (to be used by one child) when that computer is needed as part of computer labs in every HS in the country to provide training to help hundreds and thousands of students year after year to acquire basic computer skills and obtain computer certifications?
A simple example: In the 1960’s I attended High School in Guyana. Typewriting was not part of the curriculum. (The Education Ministry did not see the need to teach typewriting as a subject or lacked funds to provide typewriters in all the schools).
Some years later with the workplace now fully computerized, I had to learn to type or else I become obsolete. If students currently attending Guyana’s High Schools are not taught basic computer skills, they are obsolete from Day 1 even though they may possess a High School diploma.
Roger Luncheon’s letter is a palpable demonstration of his government’s lack of understanding of the nuts and bolts of ICT education – and that the only way to educate Guyana’s students is to integrate the ICT curriculum into the general curriculum and to provide computer labs for all the High Schools.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
New York
