IN AN article in one of the local dailies yesterday, it was reported that the government has an initiative to place at least one laptop in each household, although the timeline for that is unclear.  What was clear, however, was the timeline for equipping all secondary schools and half of all primary schools with computer labs. According to Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh, the year 2013 is the target set for that aspect of the overall scheme.

It is inconceivable that the policy initiative by the government – or any other stakeholder programme – will be to have the computers used for word-processing and other simple desktop functions. Implicit in the introduction of computers into schools is connecting these computers and the students who use them to the World Wide Web – a largely unregulated mechanism for accessing information.  The benefits of this move are enormous; the Internet has revolutionized knowledge around the world, and online access increasingly means the difference between success and failure in the classroom.

While we chart the course, however, on the road to the future, with this transformation of our education system via the integration of computers, it is important that we realise and account for the several implications, albeit negative, along the way.

The primary concern, obviously, is the safety of our children, the primary beneficiaries for this (pending) information-age revolution.  I am unsure of whether the recently passed Sexual Offences Legislation includes any specific section aimed at dealing with the nexus between the Internet and sexual offences, but this is an area that I believe we should be proactively concerned with as is the ration of computers to household increases.

Anybody who has seen the NBC show, ‘To Catch a Predator’ would recognize how easy it is for child predators to trick innocent children into situations where they are made vulnerable to sexual molestation, even murder.  The United States of America has tough – some say draconian – measures in defining the parameters of online predatory behaviour, with persons proven to be ‘grooming’ minor and/or even an adult pretending to be a minor, liable to arrest, trial and conviction for a sexual offense.  If it is that the recent Act in Guyana doesn’t include similar provisions, then, in my view, this is something that must be addressed in the next round of amendments.

There is the need to protect children from the worst excesses of the Internet itself.  A friend and I were in discussion the other day about an incident he experienced.  He took his two personal computers for servicing after their performance was found wanting.  When the technician told him the problem was malware, most likely from one or more of the dozens of questionable sites that his computers had logged as visiting, he was shocked.  Even as a fairly computer savvy adult, he had no idea that these sites were being accessed right under his nose, by one or both of his teenaged children.

Even in countries like the United States, dealing with this is a tricky area with regard to concerns of censorship and the constitutionality of restricting certain content.  Public schools and public libraries, for example, which fall into specific categories, are required by law to restrict access to, and the content of, certain websites only when children are likely to use the computer – there is no blanket requirement to restrict web access on publicly-available computers.  Of course, in any modern democracy, censorship within the privacy of the home is a highly individual matter.  My friend told me he advised his technician to set his computers’ web access to the highest restrictions.

In the wake of the increasing presence of Internet-ready computers in the hands of our young people, however, I feel a less reactionary or incidental approach needs to be taken.  In view of the fact that the public school is expected to be the testing ground for Guyana’s Internet revolution, I can think of no entity more apt to look after the marshalling of introduction of computer-in-every-high-school initiative than the Parent-Teacher Association.

I should say that I’m not unaware of the disparity in resources and knowledge among PTAs across the country.  The hard reality is that the PTA of the average senior secondary school is most likely to have far greater access to knowledge and resource bases than the PTA of the average community high school; the same goes for urban schools versus rural schools.  This is where the benefit of networking and knowledge sharing would be most beneficial.

Perhaps as a policy initiative – complementary to the provision of hardware and the modification of the curriculum – the capacity building of PTAs to afford parents the ability to monitor their children’s online activities can be implemented.  The needs of parents in this regard are universal and not restricted to income or access and hence a mechanism needs to be created to ensure that these are equitably met.

Further, it doesn’t have to be enormously technical either.  Simple things like teaching parents to check their browser’s history, or to adjust and/or place site restrictions on their computers, would go a long way.  Parents can even be taught how to assist their children to conduct online research for school projects.  I know of one media entity that has an initiative underway for a similar venture, and there is no reason why this can’t be replicated; indeed, when the project is officially launched, I will return to this discussion.

In closing, undoubtedly computerization and connectivity provide great opportunities for the development of Guyana’s young minds, and, by extension, the development of Guyana as a whole.  Coupled with the introduction of this innovation, however, is the responsibility that it works the way it is intended to work and possible negative implications are proactively addressed.