Manama: A Bahrain lawmaker has called for replacing all school books with laptops in a bid to spare students the daily bag overload.
“I urge the education ministry to rescue our students from the terrible onslaught of books by providing adequate laptops,” MP Mahmoud Al Mahmoud said. “New technology should be used to help the frail bodies with bags that even more mature people and grown-ups have problems carrying,” the lawmaker said.
Falling prices of computers and laptops should motivate the ministry officials to make the step towards the use of technology to ease burdens and make schools a more comfortable experience, he said. “We have noted at the latest technology exhibitions that the prices of laptops have fallen drastically, which makes them a much more attractive option than preparing and printing textbooks,” he said.
“Computers also have the advantage of lasting longer since students tend to throw away their books at the end of the school year, which forces the ministry to spend more money on printing new copies. Students would not throw their laptops at the end of the academic year,” he said in the proposal. Other advantages include attractive reading and interactive options, ease of use and fast operations that save time and energy, he said.
The independent lawmaker said that he had heard several stories about parents complaining about the weight of schoolbags and the physical problems they caused to young students, especially smaller ones. Teachers and schools have been engaged in heated debates about the significance of computers in the education of their students. “Laptops certainly have a critical role in the future of education,” Aqeela, an Arabic teacher, said. “However, they should not be seen as the only source of learning or knowledge. Textbooks and writing notebooks have their own importance and should not be dismissed lightly,” she said.
Yousuf Mohammad said that he supported the move towards relieving the students’ bag load. “Our children have been suffering tremendously and as everybody acknowledges this problem, there should be real action to address it and make the students see schools under a different angle,” the office clerk and father-of-two said. “A laptop would also be more in line with the world’s inexorable progress towards technology.”
