Port Louis — I had never been as heartened by a speech as I was by the Prime minister's on Independence Day, "We need to double the number of students getting tertiary education over the next ten years," he said. Now we are talking business! Nations are only as successful as their educational policies. I hope the speech has had a similar inspiring effect on Mr. Gokhool as it has had on me.

I had this sudden and irresistible urge to trap the Prime minister's words before they went cold, put them in a magic hat and toss them with the other measures, which would make an educated nation pop out slowly but surely, the way a magician starts pulling an interminable string of scarves from a hat where the right components are put at the right time and at the right speed. So what other measures do we need?

The insane amounts of money to educate a few fortunate, mostly middle-class, kids who will almost never feel obligated to give anything back to the country. Scholarships should be given to economically deserving students to study at their doorstep. Instead of one laureate, the nation can educate 10 to 15 deserving students. In fact a whole class.

In the magic hat, we could add the millions spent subsidizing religious lobbies of all kinds. I am sure no truly religious person would object to this money being used to educate the children of God who would be left out otherwise.

If more money is needed, we could do worse than trim down the wasteful expenditure of para-statal bodies and decrease non-jobs created to please collaborators.

The duty-free cars could also be done away with for the sake of educating our children. Which true patriot would not see the sense behind this?

However, for us to achieve all this, we should start by eliminating a system, which is based on stigma, prejudice and segregation. I dream of the day regional schools of all kinds replace the high-sounding names some schools have and which automatically stigmatize other schools. I dream of the day schools with 'a reputation' are turned into museums that we could visit in the same way Jews visit concentration camps. I dream of the day I could visit these schools with my grandchildren and explain to them the torture the children of previous generations had to go through, with our silent complicity, to get into them. I could show them other schools where access depended on some mysterious criteria that we had to go to foreign courts to clarify. I dream of the day these symbols of torture and discrimination are just an ugly spot in the history of this country.

When my grandchildren are surprised at how intelligent people accepted such torture and discrimination for their children so readily; when they are baffled at how quickly we put on our ethnic gear and start howling labels at each other the moment our interests are challenged; when they feel privileged that they were born one generation later, we will have achieved our aim.

Yes, Prime minister. It is all within reach. It takes a lot of political courage to achieve. I wish you courage to influence your minister of Education to start it. I wish generations of children to come to have the opportunity to remember you as the one who made tertiary education accessible to those who could not even dream of it. I wish generations of children remember you as the one who liberated them of stigma, prejudice and discrimination.