Dear Editor,

In this age of rapidly advancing technology affecting all aspects of our lives and social relations, the more enthusiastic advocates of information technology have been quite correctly adapting audio-visual and other electronic media to teaching. It is actually being forced on institutions with the not-too-subtle implication that it is the deus ex machina for all educational purposes.

For mindless bean counters and their bosses with their eyes myopically focused on the bottom line of income and expenditures, computers, electronic gadgets and accessible programmes offer the comforting illusion of saving money. For exasperated teachers desperate to maximise achievement in a time of scare resources, these magical machines promise exalted efficacy. The problem with all this zeal of modernising educational models lies in arriving at the optimal equation between people, machines, and programmes. Until this optimal equation is fully understood by all, everyone participating in the enterprise will be losers.

We need to apply modern technology to education but we should never forget that until now machines are no substitute for individual thinking. Moreover they impact knowledge but not wisdom. Education is about acquiring knowledge as well as wisdom.

Norman King

Kingston