by Surendra BISSOONDOYAL

The president of the Republic, in his message on the occasion of the National Day, urged the youth of the country to show discernment in the use of technology, a double-edged weapon, adopting what is good and rejecting what is bad. A good advice. The only problem is that the development of a sense of discernment, based on thinking and reasoning, does not form part of our school curriculum.

The prime minister, on his part, stressed on the fact that there is a time lag between the sowing of seeds and harvesting the products. This is commonsense and should be obvious. But we do not inculcate a sense of long-term vision in our children who cannot see beyond what the examination syllabuses require of them in order to pass exams.

Both the president and the prime minister are right. But are we establishing a conducive learning environment to encourage people to think for themselves? We owe it to Satish Boolell to have reminded us that one of the qualities of a good teacher is to encourage his students to think for themselves. But, in the context of intensive ?private? tuition fuelled by cut-throat competition and the onslaught of sophisticated technological gadgets, students have unfortunately other axes to grind.

Politicians, in general, but more particularly when they are in power, have an aversion to independent-minded persons and objective opinions. There are politicians in power who cannot tolerate criticisms coming from the print media. They would prefer the latter to repeat ad nauseam what the local monopolistic television channel dishes out as news every day.

At the same time, they want to transform Mauritius into an intelligent island. It is not by wishful thinking or by using a magic wand that such a transformation can happen. It can be achieved only through a clear vision supported by appropriate action. This is what Singapore has done when its government promoted a vision of ?Thinking schools, Learning nation? and its emphasis was on ?ability-driven education, innovation and enterprise and national education?. The aim was to have ?a nation of thinking and committed citizens capable of meeting the challenges of the future?.

Is Mauritius in a position to follow the example of Singapore? No way, unless our education system stops promoting rote-learning and examination systems that rely mainly on memorization. It is a case of the examination tail-wagging the education dog.

For the past decade, our leaders have been promoting the idea of transforming Mauritius into a cyber island. A ?cybercity? has emerged in the Ebene area. But do call centres, however useful and however welcome they may be, represent our vision of an intelligent island?

To become an intelligent island we must, like Singapore, promote the idea of thinking schools. The Cambridge Examinations Syndicate has developed a subject called ?Thinking Skills?, which can be taken at the A/S level for the HSC Exams. Many Cambridge colleges are using Thinking Skills assessment for admission to University courses.

More than 2,500 years ago, Gautama the Buddha had taught his disciples to think for themselves. ?Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own commonsense.? This was not to the liking of the priestly classes who wanted everybody to follow them and their rituals blindly. They were very powerful and saw to it that the Buddha?s teachings did not get firmly rooted in India.

In the first half of the 17th century, René Descartes, the French philosopher-mathematician, made the following statement: Je pense, donc je suis. But what is lesser known is that he based this conclusion on a more fundamental aspect of our thinking: Je doute, donc je pense.

There is an important seed that we need to sow at an early age, the seed of thinking for oneself. Unfortunately, we have been immunized since childhood against the ?contagious disease? called thinking and reasoning. We pay the MBC to do the thinking for us, with no doubt allowed.