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Malaysians know that learning languages is important. A language is common in a certain field such as English in Internet. Other languages like Mandarin will be used more often.

The Prime Minister wants Malaysian students in Japan to acquire skills and work ethics. He also advises them to have a good command of the English language to excel in information technology as much of the information in this area is in English.

Sometimes, the Prime Minister does wrong things such as the constraint on the freedom of press. That he encourages Malaysians to learn English since the 80's last century is right.
From 1970 to 1982, the Malaysian Government destroyed the teachings of English. We need a long time to correct the mistake. Therefore, it is important that we improve the teachings of Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin and Tamil. We must grapple with the language conundrum.

Some believe that English is used in 92% of Internet and Mandarin is only 4%. But, computers like ideograms. We expect the use of Mandarin in this area will increase.

INTERNET

Besides encouraging the youth to learn English, we hope Dr Mahathir pays more attention to the implementation of smart schools. Learning languages is one thing, but using Internet and other information and communication technology, ICT, is another.

As Malaysia promotes Multimedia Super Corridor, other countries like Singapore with its advantage in English have gone forward. United Arab Emirates has created an Internet City. This desert country has 220,000 Internet users.

We have 23 million people and we only have 1.6 million Internet users. According to the Index 2000, Malaysia is ranked 17th in the knowledge-based economy, behind Korea (15th) and Singapore (16th). It is more complex than the index.

For over one decade, Malaysia has been gearing towards k-economy. But the National Information Technology Council, NITC, has been struggling with the dilemma. Its secretary Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen emphasizes the need to shift to k-economy.

SMART SCHOOLS

We see the gap between those who can access Internet and those we can't or don't-the digital divide. This aggravates the gap between the rich and the poor. We must tackle the divide.

The MSC flagships include electronic government, smart schools and multipurpose card. Because of various factors including economic crisis, the Government has slowed the implementation of smart schools.

From 1996 to 2000, the Government intended to introduce 90 smart schools, 81 existing schools and nine new schools. Smart is the eponym of an American system to use modern technology in schools. This means using computers to teach languages, science and mathematics. Then, there is the delay.

The Government has Smart Schools Management System and Global Schools Network connecting with selected schools in other parts of the world. We hope this system works.

As there has been a delay in implementing smart schools project in the 90 pioneer schools, we don't know when the Government can extend the concept to over 8,000 schools in the country.

Now, the public have donated computer to some schools and some headmasters and teachers initiate ICT in their schools. True, the Government is introducing a new system of teaching of English in all schools. It requires greater efforts to make Malaysians ICT literate.

Education should not be constrained by party politics. We need to quicken the pace of implementing smart schools irrespective of party politics, race and religion. We have to overcome the digital divide.