One innovative quality action taken by Hon. Gokhool is to have given due importance to co and extracurricular activities within the context of formal education. Hitherto such activities have been relegated to the discretion of schools and the privileged few who recognize their importance have exposed their children to new learning experiences. This government has had the merit of embedding co-curricular activities in mainstream learning. The textbook and the syllabus are not enough for the blossoming of the individual as a whole. We need to train our youth to be total men and women. Textbook based education truncates the individual into a half-based individual with some knowledge of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and without a broad culture which distinguishes a really educated person from a narrow-minded dilettante. A knowledge-based society needs different men and women. Notwithstanding good academic results in English and French, very few young Mauritians can use the language with oral fluency. Emphasis on the written has made warped young people who lack communication skills that will enable them to interact socially in an Anglophone or a Francophone society.

Intelligence is multiple. Currently we are pushing children who have biologically sharp brains into machine-oriented schools. We bog the school hours with a curriculum which is not biologically feasible. Look at a school time-table. Academic subjects follow one another with no opportunity given to the child to develop other intelligences. The musical, the interpersonal, intrapersonal intelligences are neglected in favour of the linguistic, logical and mathematical, if ever teachers manage to foster intelligence through the subjects corresponding to the secondary intelligences.

What is the range of co and extra-curricular activities that should be practiced? I place the following extra-curricular activities in order of importance: community service; health promotion; leadership skills; debate, drama, music; promotion of specialized skill in one or more musical instrument or vocal music; ability to play a few respectable indoor games (e.g chess?)

This list is only indicative of the nature of the exposure our youth need to complete their insufficient syllabus-based education.

Co-curricular activities may include project writing; research based enquiries on topics due in class to broaden the learner?s awareness of the theme; book-reading activities; activities related to sustainable development, human rights, health promotion, environmental awareness; discussion clubs for elders, seminars for clusters of schools.

We should review our timetables in secondary schools if we want to promote extra and co-curricular activities. There should be no special timetable for co-curricular activities because they constitute an extension of curricular preoccupation. Every teacher?s scheme of work (roadmap) should show a balance between the curricular or academic and the co-curricular.

My kind reader will allow me a digression into the importance of the roadmap. Any analysis of schemes of work currently desired shows time of execution and theme. This is an empty scheme because it shows how limited the school?s vision of education is.

A scheme of work should also demonstrate methodologies; assessment schemes; opportunities of independent learning exercises for the learner.

Our teachers call such an exercise useless paperwork simply because the scheme of work is not used at all after it has been submitted, at least not as an important tool for review in the monitoring exercise. It has become in our common practice an unnecessary burden which the PRB perfunctorily imposes on teachers. It is not with the new generations that the real roadmap has to start being treated as part of their mainstream professional duties, but with the older generation also. Every roadmap has to be implemented and monitored. If the English Language teacher shows his intention to hold a debate to reinforce issues discussed in class, he should be in a position to provide evidence to the Head of School during review.

What qualities do extra and co-curricular activities develop in the child?

A broader view of a topic than the syllabus can give.

The child does what he learns, and does not just learn what he does

The child discovers talents otherwise hidden. I discovered my oratorical skills during debates I participated in from Form IV to Form VI.

Such activities unlock the potential of the child.

Ability to learn in a team.

Better understanding of class-based teaching.

We shall now broach the issue of human resource capacity.

We know that language teachers are the beasts of burden for extra and co-curricular activities. Every teacher, infact, should have the responsibility for co-curricular activities. In my ideal conception, no teacher will be recruited who does not have the knowledge of one or more co-curricular fields. A Physics teacher may contribute to a Photographic Club, the Maths teacher to a few indoor games. But till this dream is realized, our teachers in schools now can still learn the other co and extracurricular skill and must be made to contribute to the reformed timetable. The ratio of time allocated to activities and to the syllabus may be 1: 4. No doubt many academic periods may have to be suppressed. Who will dare? Do more and more periods enrich learning or stultify the child? Should we not diversify teaching and learning methods by engaging the child in more meaningful activities than passive listening and note-taking.

Mr Gokhool will go down in history as the first minister to have taken to heart the qualitative improvement of education after 40 years of planning and for finalizing quality. I humbly feel he is going too fast with too great a number of quality based projects which do not get time to be absorbed by the school. The success of Model United Nations is due to the fact that it has had time to be embedded in the school tradition with time and after many annual events. Again it is this minister who revived it. We should simply ensure that every child participates in at least two different extracurricular activities. If we really believe in them, we should find ways and means to make them compulsory not by coercion, but through manipulated consent.

Every student intending to compete should show evidence of having participated in two activities. Admission into Mauritian universities should be conditional upon the candidate?s participation in at least two activities. There are many administrative accessories that should accompany the institutionalizing of extra and co-curricular activities. No one can ever force schools to participate. There will have to be a genuine awareness-raising campaign for unions to accept this idea.

Santosh Kumar MAHADEO</B>