Avinash Meetoo

As I suppose you all know by now, the British Council has decided to close its public library in Mauritius. This decision, which, as far as I can tell, is based on economical reasons, is very debatable as this will prevent people who like to read to have access to English books.

I have very fond memories of the British Council library. I was a subscriber when I was a kid then again when I came back to Mauritius in 1998. I remained a subscriber until two years ago when I decided to stop subscribing for two main reasons:

 

The library, which was originally a real library with real books and a very studious atmosphere, became a médiathèque with Web-enabled PCs, LCD TVs showing English movies, etc. From total silence, the place became noisy… But, more problematic, someone there decided that most books should be kept somewhere hidden and only retrieved when asked for. This made stumbling by accident on a book more or less impossible.

See, I became a Computer Scientist in large part because, at the British Council library, I stumbled by accident on one book when I was a kid. That book was the formidable Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley:

I read that book when I was 14-15 and fell in love. I discovered that very special type of literature called computer programming. From there I read books on algorithms, data structures, computer architecture, etc, all of them obtained at the British Council library. I can’t imagine what my education would have been without them…

A second reason why I stopped subscribing was that I felt that the subscription fee was becoming too high. I think it was around Rs 1000 per year which is waaaaaaay above what a normal Mauritian can pay. For the record, other libraries in Mauritius, and especially Charles Baudelaire library (which is the French alter-ego of the British Council library) charge substantially less per year.

If I were cynical, I would say that this was a deliberate decision by the British Council to have fewer and fewer subscribers until closing down would become the only viable thing to do.

But I prefer not to be cynical (once), this is just a result of very bad judgement.

I’ve just finished reading an article on Le Mauricien entitled Computing : des Courseworks sous-traités et tarifés. In the article, the journalist explains how HSc students in Mauritius pay some teachers, some lecturers, some past students and even some  IT professional (what this may mean) to do their projects for money and this is done with the benediction of parents.

Here is a revealing quote from the article:

Les “services” de ces “helpers” sont tarifés selon la complexité du travail. “Pas moins de Rs 5 000 ; cela peut aller jusqu’à Rs 15 000. Un contractuel qui ne se contente que d’un coursework par an demandera un prix élevé. Mais celui qui produit plusieurs projets réclamera Rs 5 000 à Rs 6 000 à chaque candidat ” affirme cet enseignant. Des enseignants de Computing relatent ce cas référé à la police, il y a trois ans, et impliquant un enseignant qui avait réclamé Rs 4 000 pour chaque “commande” reçue. […] Le plus grave, indique-t-on, c’est que ces travaux réalisés à l’école se font, dans la majorité des cas, avec la bénédiction des parents.

Plagiarism too…

The article also states that some students are now adepts of copying prior works from the Internet or even from past students. The journalist writes that more frequent and thorough verifications from the MES would be a good thing in order to help reduce this problem.

 

Personally, I feel the problem runs deep in our education system where accent is on succeeding at exams instead of acquiring knowledge and mastering a skill. Students and parents both wrongly believe that what is important is that piece of paper from Cambridge. They forget that the essential reason why people study is to become productive adults who can work efficiently so as to have time to enjoy life.

Work is not about waking up in the morning at six, leaving home at seven, getting in an office in Port-Louis at nine and having to work overtime (more or less) everyday because one is not productive enough. This is a recipe for catastrophe and frustration (which sometime characterises our society.)

Work is…

According to me, work is loving what you do and finding it easy. Work is also about getting home early to have time to play with your kids. Work, finally, is also about being good enough for your boss (yourself in case you are self-employed like me) to pay you a nice salary.

And it so happens that a lot of parents don’t know that. This is where things need to change if we want our society to evolve.

En apparté…

Taking tuitions seven days a week and focussing 100% on succeeding at exams is also a bad strategy. Sure, it creates a scholarship holder or a laureate but I’m afraid a lot of them lack creativity (because they were imposed so many constraints over so many years.) The problem is that, according to the World Economic Forum, organisers of the Davos forum, Mauritius has an “educational system [which] gets mediocre marks for quality” and the country will have a lot of problems to transition to an innovation-driven economy due to a lack of people who can innovate.

Let’s hope they are wrong. But, I’ll be frank, I think they are right.