Banjul, the Gambia — A representative of Applied Scholastics International (ASI) Ann Roberts has expressed the hope of The Gambia becoming the vanguard of study technology in West Africa in the not too distant future.

Ms Roberts was speaking to The Independent at the end of the closing ceremony of a four week national workshop on Study Technology held at the Gambia College in Brikama. She said they were able to train more than 5000 teachers drawn from all the government schools all over the country, together with the final year students of the Gambia College. She added that The Gambia was the only country that had almost all its teachers trained in the technology.

In giving the history of the organisation, Ms. Roberts asserted that it was a non-profit making public benefit organisation, that was established in 1972 in USA to provide training in the L. Ron Hubbard's Educational methods. She also revealed that the organization was universal with 400 programme centres in every continent in the world. She said the technology was a unique programme which offers teachers and students a workable solution to improving the quality of education in any activity and that it was an exact system that teaches a student how to learn. She indicated that the workshop was meant to rehabilitate the teacher by giving him or her exact procedures with which he/she can spot and solve the causes of the student's non-comprehensive, his/her lack of application of information and his/her reason for abandoning study, among other things. Earlier on during the opening ceremony of the workshop, the Secretary of State for Education Ann Therese Ndong Jatta reminded teachers that their role was to facilitate the learning process, not because they are more intelligent than their pupils but because they have already got the experience and exposure that their students lack. She said by having the learner become autonomous, the workload of teachers, which she said includes shouting and yelling, the need to recourse to the cane if one must and the energy all could be better used in creating that environment that would make all feel good, thus the need for Study Technology. "I believe everybody is good and intelligent if you provide the enabling environment. The joy of life the children you are working with, the results cannot but just smile everytime with the results that you produce," she reminded teachers. Speaking earlier, Robin Hogarth a representative of L. Ron Hubbard Foundation gave the history and insight of the origin of study technology. He asserted that the technology was based on the work of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard an American researcher whose technology he said is being used by the Applied Scholastics International. He revealed that beside study technology which was an educational discipline, the findings of L. Ron Hubbard are also used to improve the standard and quality education and better living through criminal rehabilitation, drug abuse prevention and rehabilitation and moral development.

Other speakers included the principal of Gambia College Jenung Manneh, the acting vice-principal Yvette Phillot and Burama Jammeh the national coordinator of StudyTechnology in The Gambia. Those in attendance included the National Assembly member of Kombo Central Abdou Badjie and head teachers of various schools.