Tablet issue has nothing to do with real education reform

I suspect that the "tablet thing" is just a ploy to distract us from asking the real questions about the new education policy. And if that's the case, the new government has indeed succeeded. Even during the policy debate in Parliament last week, all that the opposition lawmakers were asking about was the tablet, and not the more urgent questions relating to improvement of the abysmal quality of education.

It won't take long before we finally realise that the popular tablet issue will just dissipate into thin air. It wasn't supposed to be of major significance in the first place.

Pheu Thai's election promise was incredibly simplistic. It was to be a sweeping plan to give every Pathom 1 (Grade 1) student throughout the country a free tablet PC. It wasn't supposed to be taken seriously. It was supposed to be part of the "populist package" that was to give the party the image of digital visionary. More important, it was to be a plank that would outdo the Democrats in all fields in terms of giving out freebies.

When asked where the money was coming from, some of the party's executives tried to justify it by saying that if you didn't have to print textbooks, the money could be used to buy tablets, to distribute to all students in their first year of education. They didn't say - and nobody asked - what kind of content would be downloaded into the tablets?

Of course, people were curious how the tablets would work where there is no Internet connection, and what would a Grade 1 student do with the gadget if even his or her teacher found it difficult to comprehend the new device. There was also the question of whether Grade 2 and Grade 3 students would also get the tablets.

To me, that is what Deputy PM Chalerm Yoobamrung would call an "electioneering technique". You lend credence to any such claims only at your own risk.

Now, Minister Woravat - who of course didn't know he would hold the education portfolio when his party was promoting the tablet policy - says he will first ask all schools throughout the country about their "readiness" to receive the tablets.

"They don't have to take the tablets if they are not ready," he declared. That practically suggested that the project was as good as aborted - because no school can claim to be ready to adopt the "tablet offensive".

Teachers aren't equipped or trained to teach using tablets. Nobody is sure who would write the content, or even what the content would be. The minister has said the tablets for Grade 1 students will not be of the high-tech type. It's going to be a simple design that's suitable for younger kids. "The tablets will be more or less like toys for them," he explained.

There are simply too many obstacles along this path - and sooner or later the project will be shelved, with the excuse that it needs to be studied in more detail. Everybody will heave a sigh of relief when that confession is finally announced. But it won't come soon. Politicians need to hang on to their "tangible assets" to woo voters even after the voters have come to the belated realisation that they have been hoodwinked.

In the end, the tablet issue has nothing to do with education reform in any meaningful way. We have yet to be told how the new government will go about taking the absolutely necessary steps to raise the standards of teachers, to bridge the gap between good and bad schools, and to end the rampant corruption related to all education activities.

Forget the tablet gobbledygook and start asking some real questions about this country's rapidly deteriorating education standards.