New kind of teacher needed

THE EDITOR, Madam:

WE LIVE in a world which is increasingly driven by technology. Advances in software and computer hardware capabilities have placed enormous quantities of information at our fingertips. We are virtually threatened by information overload. Traditional modes of managing, sorting and communicating information are all but obsolete.

These developments have not only ushered in the reality of a global village but demand that it be peopled by millennium individuals steeped in technological skills.

The field of education is greatly challenged by these advances. Ultimately, the educational system is responsible for organising this seemingly chaotic mass of new knowledge and explosion of information into a coherent whole, appropriately packaged, for effective delivery. This function is imperative if each country within the global village is to eke out more than a cave dwelling status, in the context of the new world techno-culture.

Third World countries are particularly challenged. Limited resources, a weak or non-existent technological base and cultures that view technology with a mixture of fear, suspicion, and indifference defines the challenge along sharper lines. Despite these constraints, the challenge must be met if economic competitiveness, local and global, is to be got and maintained.

Here at home, policy-makers cannot confine themselves to consideration of the related macro issues only.

Careful attention must be paid to the task of ensuring that the appropriate technology effectively impacts content development and delivery in the academic, technology and vocational skill areas.

Viewed from this perspective, our teacher training institutions are long overdue a complete physical re-tooling and revolutionised, technology-based curriculum. In short, we need a new kind of teacher. The re-tooling of the primary, secondary and tertiary centres of learning must complement this exercise for it to be meaningful. The sooner we act, the better.

I am etc,

AUBREY WILLIAMS

36 Barbara Avenue,

Sector 'F', Edgewater

Portmore, St. Catherine

Via Go-Jamaica

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