By IPS Correspondents
MEXICO CITY, Oct 12 1999 (IPS)

Developing nations are joining the largest library in the world today – the network of 56 million computer hosts linked to nearly 200 million people worldwide known as the Internet.

Soon, Internet users will be able to download many of the world’s leading journals and books in less than an hour and elementary students will be able to travel via the World Wide Web to other lands – seeing, talking and sharing customs and hopes for the future with other children.

High school students will have access by the click of a mouse to advanced mathematics, science and technology, even if their teachers are not adequately trained in such areas.

Educational systems in the most advanced countries already are being transformed to meet the demands of a changing world and developing nations are grasping the need to prepare their manpower to compete in the new market – fine-tuning their education systems to comply with new information technologies.

As part of such moves, Mexico his month is scheduled to launch its own version of Internet II — based on the U.S. initiative.

The 10 million dollar project will link some 30 universities and academic institutions into a high-speed hub that aims to accelerate the next stage of Internet development in the academic sphere in Latin America.

Alejandro Pisanty, president of the University Consortium for the Development of Internet II, a group of universities charged with running the network says the challenge is to develop content relevant to learners in one of the world’s 12 largest economies.

The Internet is predominantly an English-language medium but the new project will bring more Spanish-based research onto the Internet. It aims to be at least 100 times faster than the present Internet and will be open only to those in the areas of research, teaching and learning.

Academics agree that what is missing in the majority of education systems in developing countries are curricula that take into account the new information technologies, currently being developed at an astounding pace.

Just as there is a rush in the private sector to reform business processes and working styles to cope with big challenges in the Information Age, schools also need to re-organise and keep up, educationalists say.

When South Africa announced its Curriculum 2005 a few years ago it had in mind the rewards of training school children to think and apply knowledge to their daily lives rather than the traditional learning by rote method.

Known as Outcomes Based Education (OBE), South Africa’s education minister Kader Asmal has faith that the new programme will transform a system decayed by decades of apartheid into one of world standard.

Asmal says the new “… curricula are based on collective input and active participation by all, and stimulate critical thinking, analysis and working methods … OBE is the best way for our country to go”.

It is the trend throughout the Asian Tiger nations, from Taiwan to South Korea and in the world’s second most important economy, Japan.

Two years ago, when Singapore embarked on changing its education system from a disciplinarian approach toward a more creative system, it sought to reverse the production of mere “mechanics” capable of producing high-tech goods without the ability to think and be able to invent their own new technologies.

Equally worried about producing a workforce to cope in the modern information age, the Malaysian government launched its ‘Smart Schools’ project which is installing computers and the Internet in all schools.

However, what increasingly is becoming common knowledge among educators is the fact that new skills are not merely how to use computers or how to get information, but rather how to solve problems and how to create value, with the help of others, through information networks.

In other words countries hoping to transform their education systems into tools for economic development need to create information literacy – the ability to solve problems taking advantage of information technology and networks.

“There is a great deal of high quality information and instruction available on the Web, but there is also much false information, dangerous information, and poor instruction available, and learners often have difficulty judging the quality,” says Gregg Jackson, Associate Professor at George Washington University’s Education Policy Program.

“Overwhelmingly, the content currently represents western culture and thinking. The costs of web-based instruction currently are too high for widespread use in elementary and secondary education, but may be justified to supplement the curriculum in high priority areas for which there are not enough qualified teachers.”

Next month India hosts the US-based Council for Global Education at a conference entitled the ‘Content of Education in a Global Civilization’. It is aimed at preparing education systems for the challenges of the 21st century.

Sessions will discuss human potential, its development needs in the context of the emerging global civilization, and the role of education in meeting these needs.

There is widespread agreement that education for the 21st century needs to be different from the predominant 19th-century model of education, whose basic premise was preparation for employment.

“Worldwide efforts to bring about changes in education pale when compared to the massive changes that have accompanied this last century in science, technology and economics,” writes Toshiba Corporation president Taizo Nishimuro in an article produced for Techknowlogia, an Internet-based education forum.

“This mismatch between what is possible and where we have inadvertently arrived should propel us to re-examine the premise on which education is based,” he says.

Other factors forcing educators to rethink education include an upsurge in violence and drug abuse worldwide, lack of compassion and tolerance, an increased number of younger and younger children getting involved in violence and myriad other social ills forcing them to ask — “What has gone wrong?”

Together with infusing information technologies into educational systems a recent response has been a call for more ‘character education’ in schools.

“Implementation of character education that revolves around key values such as respect, tolerance and honesty needs to be discussed and evaluated for its effectiveness in curing social ills and bringing about changes that will prepare our children for a future of increasing global ‘inter-connectedness’ and uncertainty,” notes Nishimuro.

On the other hand, Web-based instruction combines the capabilities of books, filmstrips, radio, television, and instructional software. It also adds access to the vast resources stored on thousands of servers, sophisticated search tools, and communication among two or more people located at great distances allowing students to learn at their own pace.

India, whose 1 billion population has 14 distinct languages with their own scripts and literary traditions, also is trying to bend new information technologies in its favour.

IPS correspondent Ranjit Dev Raj reports that the New Delhi government tried to promote the use of Hindi which is spoken or understood by 40 percent of the population instead of English – the language that serves as a link to the subcontinent and abroad.

Because English remains the language of the elite, the government also is emphasising learning through mother tongues.

The Centre for Development of Advance Computing (CDAC), based in Pune, India has come up with solutions for Machine Assisted Translation (MANTRA). This allows instant translation of English sentences into Hindi and several other Indian languages.

C-DAC has also come up with what is called Intelligence-based Script Font Code (ISFOC) which allows typing in any Indian language using standard keyboards and in the ‘Windows’ format.

The result has been a boon for desk-top publishing in sub- continental languages.

C-DAC has also come up with a high-volume card which instantly converts any standard personal computer into a multi-lingual platform and has made computer technology accessible for all non- English using people.

“Our aim is to create a framework for the co-existence of all the living languages of the world with diverse scripts on standard computers allowing script-independent universal software,” says Vijay Bhatkar, C-DAC’s chief executive.

Such new developments are a sign that developing countries are being proactive participants in the global information exchange rather than remaining passive consumers of imported information and Web content.

Rather than wondering how information communication technologies can support their existing development policies, a growing number of developing countries are deciding to take information and communications as the starting point to development.

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