25 July 2007
Port Louis — It sounds odd to give my views of Mauritius as a foreigner. Why? because I have spent more of my life here than in my native country, Malaysia where I was born and educated. I came to Mauritius in January 1982, and since then I am settled here.
Adaptation was not that difficult as far as the multi racial country that it is as Malaysia is also the same. Only difficulty was the language and the infrastructure at that time. Mauritius was a like a small village in the early 80's, life used to literally stop at 17 00. There was no way of moving about on the island after 20.00 hrs.
There were hardly any places where one could go for entertainment and the road infrastructure was bad too. Today, 25 years later things are very much different, thing have evolved very positively and its a much better place to live and enjoy life. I always tell my friends that I brought in development in this country. I've seen Mauritius changing for the better.
Somehow I would like to give you my opinion about how the education system here could be improved.
Regionalisation would be the key word. Let every primary school in an area have a feeder secondary school eg. Sacre Coeur Primary School and Sacre Coeur Secondary School in the same area. Once a child goes to a particular primary school he or she knows that automatically he or she will go to the same secondary school. All her school friends will be there. No problem for adaptation.
So many of the problems about the star colleges, transport problem would be solved on its own. It would not be a difficult task provided that all the primary and secondary schools have the same standards and name imposed by the authorities. The mind set of the parents also will have to change - as all the parents, here, want their children to go to RCPL or QEC. The rat race will stop. This is causing a torture to the little kids who have to compete as such a tender age.
This is how it works in Malaysia and I think our ministers travel often enough to see the good from other countries and should adapt to this.
This country has a great potential, only thing is to tap the various resources, work together as an entity without any political interference and it will the number one country to live in - a model for others to follow.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 L'Express. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
