My existence in the virtual world

On the dawn of 17^th August 1744, the Saint Geran , a majestic vessel under the command of Captain Delamere appeared in the North of the island. It was its first trip in the region.

Six months earlier, that is, on the 24^th March, several passengers boarded the vessel at the port of Lorient, along with cargo which included windmills ordered by Mahe de Labourdonnais for Villebague Sugar Estate, situated near Pamplemousses.

All of a sudden, at two in the morning, the ship was violently shaken. The alarm rang. Everybody, some still asleep, rushed outside on the deck. They were terrified by what they saw. The main mast was broken, crushing the lifeboats under its weight. Merciless waves had split the vessel into two. The passengers knelt to pray, the crew made a raft, which rapidly sank with its victims.

There were only nine survivors inspired by the tragic plight of these lovers, Bernardin de Saint Pierre wrote “Paul et Virginie” in 1787.This novel which vents the charms of the tropic has become over the years, the symbol of love and fidelity.

C’est un navire dont les Mauriciens ont toujours partagé avec fierté les secrets, surtout quand Bernardin de Saint Pierre l’immortalisa dans son roman « Paul et Virginie «.

Armé de 23 canons, avec un tirant d’eau de 600 tonneaux, il fut lancé à Lorient le 11 Juillet 1736 le capitaine Laurent du plessis lui fit prendre la mer pour son premier voyage de Lorient à Pondicherry le 11 novembre 1739. Par la suite, il fut commandé par le Capitaine Porée de la Toche.

Le Saint Geran devait faire naufrage le 17 août 1744 au Nord de l’île de France, aujourd’hui appelée Maurice. Ce fut le Capitaine Richard de Lamarre qui accompagna le SAINT GERAN vers son destin, avec à son bord un équipage de 149 hommes, 13 passagers, ainsi que plusieurs esclaves.

At Toastmasters, the members practice the art of thinking on one’s feet. Here are some tips which I collected from the web.

Staying Cool and Confident Under Pressure

“So, Susan, your report indicates you support forging ahead with the expansion but have you considered the impact this will have on our customers? Surely you remember the fiasco in Dallas last year when they tried the same type of project?”

Yikes! If you’re Susan, you’re likely feeling under pressure! You have to answer the question and allay the CEO’s concerns about the disruption to customers. What do you do? What do you say? How do you say it? What if you can’t think of anything to say?

This is not an uncommon situation. Whether you are put on the spot while attending a meeting, presenting a proposal, selling an idea, or answering questions after a presentation, articulating your thoughts in unanticipated situations is a skill. Thinking on your feet is highly coveted skill and when you master it, your clever and astute responses will instil immediate confidence in what you are saying.

When you can translate your thoughts and ideas into coherent speech quickly, you ensure your ideas are heard. You also come across as being confident, persuasive, and trustworthy.

Confidence is key when learning to think on your feet. When you present information, give an opinion or provide suggestions, make sure you know what you are talking about and that you are well informed. This doesn’t mean you have to know everything about everything, but if you are reasonably confident in your knowledge of the subject, that confidence will help you to remain calm and collected even if you are put unexpectedly in the hot seat.

The secret of thinking on your feet is to be prepared: learn some skills and tactics, and do some preparation for situations that might put you under pressure. Then when you do find yourself faced with unexpected questions and debate, you’ll be ready to draw on these tactics and preparation, and so stay poised while you compose your thoughts and prepare your response. Here are some tips and tactics:

1. Relax
This is often the opposite of how you are feeling when you’re under pressure, but in order for your voice to remain calm and for your brain to “think”, you have to be as relaxed as possible.

• Take deep breaths
• Take a second and give yourself a positive and affirming message
• Clench invisible muscles (thighs, biceps, feet) for a few seconds and release.

2. Listen
It comes as no surprise that listening is critical to thinking on your feet. Why do you need to listen? To make sure you fully understand the question or request before you reply. If you answer too soon, you risk going into a line of thinking that is unnecessary or inappropriate. To help you with your listening remember to:

• Look directly at the questioner
• Observe body language as well as what is being spoken
• Try to interpret what is being suggested by the question or request. Is this an attack, a legitimate request for more information, or a test? Why is this person asking this and what is the intention?

3. Have the Question Repeated
If you’re feeling particularly under pressure, ask for the question to be repeated. This gives you a bit more time to think about your response.

At first glance people think this will only make them look unsure. It doesn’t. It makes you look concerned that you give an appropriate response. It also gives the questioner an opportunity to rephrase and ask a question that is more on point. Remember, the questioner may well have just “thought on his or her feet” to ask the question, so when you give them a second chance, the question may well be better articulated and clearer to all.

By asking to have the question repeated you also get another opportunity to assess the intentions of the questioner. If it is more specific or better worded, chances are the person really wants to learn more. If the repeated question is more aggressive than the first one, then you know the person is more interested in making you uncomfortable than anything else. When that’s the case, the next tip comes in very handy.

4. Use Stall Tactics
Sometimes you need more time to get your thoughts straight and calm yourself down enough to make a clear reply. The last thing you want to do is blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind. Often this is a defensive comment that only makes you look insecure and anxious rather than confident and composed.

• Repeat the question yourself. This gives you time to think and you clarify exactly what is being asked. It also allows you to rephrase if necessary and put a positive spin on the request. “How have I considered the impact on customers in order to make sure they have a continued positive experience during the expansion?”
• Narrow the focus. Here, you ask a question of your own to not only clarify, but to bring the question down to a manageable scope. “You’re interested in hearing how I’ve considered customer impacts. What impacts are you most interested in: product availability or in-store service? ”
• Ask for clarification. Again, this will force the questioner to be more specific and hopefully get more to a specific point. “When you say you want to know how I’ve analyzed customer impacts, do you mean you want a detailed analysis or a list of the tools and methods I used?”
• Ask for a definition. Jargon and specific terminology may present a problem for you. Ask to have words and ideas clarified to ensure you are talking about the same thing.

5. Use Silence to your Advantage
We are conditioned to believe that silence is uncomfortable. However, if you use it sparingly, it communicates that you are in control of your thoughts and confident in your ability to answer expertly. When you rush to answer you also typically rush your words. Pausing to collect your thoughts tells your brain to slow everything down.

6. Stick to One Point and One Supporting Piece of Information
There’s a high risk that, under pressure, you’ll answer a question with either too much or too little information. If you give too short an answer, you risk letting the conversation slip into interrogation mode. (You’ll get another question, and the questioner will be firmly in control of how the dialogue unfolds). When your reply is too long, you risk losing people’s interest, coming across as boring, or giving away things that are better left unsaid. Remember, you aren’t being asked to give a speech on the subject. The questioner wants to know something. Respect that and give them an answer, with just enough supporting information.

This technique gives you focus. Rather than trying to tie together all the ideas that are running through your head, when you pick one main point and one supporting fact, you allow yourself to answer accurately and assuredly.

7. Prepare some “what ifs”
With a bit of forethought, it’s often possible to predict the types of questions you might be asked, so you can prepare and rehearse some answers to questions that might come your way. Let’s say you are presenting the monthly sales figures to your management team. The chances are your report will cover most of the obvious questions that the management team might have, but what other questions might you predict? What’s different about this month? What new questions might be asked? How would you respond? What additional information might you need to have to hand to support more detailed questions?

In particular, spend some time brainstorming the most difficult questions that people might ask, and preparing and rehearsing good answers to them.

8. Practice Clear Delivery
How you say something is almost as important as what you say. If you mumble or use “umm” or “ah” between every second word, confidence in what you are saying plummets. Whenever you are speaking with people, make a point to practice these key oration skills:

• Speak in a strong voice. (Don’t confuse strong with loud!)
• Use pauses strategically to emphasize a point or slow yourself down
• Vary your tone and pay attention to how your message will be perceived given the intonation you use
• Use eye contact appropriately
• Pay attention to your grammar
• Use the level of formality that is appropriate to the situation.

9. Summarize and Stop
Wrap up your response with a quick summary statement. After that, resist adding more information. There may well be silence after your summary. Don’t make the common mistake of filling the silence with more information! This is the time when other people are adsorbing the information you have given. If you persist with more information, you may end up causing confusion and undoing the great work you’ve already done in delivering your response.

Use words to indicate you are summarizing (i.e. “in conclusion,” “finally”) or briefly restate the question and your answer. So – what did I do to analyze customer impacts? I reviewed the Dallas case files in detail, and prepared a “What if” analysis for our own situation.”

Key points:

No one enjoys being putting on the spot or answering questions that you aren’t fully expecting. The uncertainty can be stressful. That stress doesn’t need to be unmanageable and you can think on your feet if you remember the strategies we just discussed. Essentially, thinking on your feet means staying in control of the situation. Ask questions, buy time for yourself, and remember to stick to one point and make that one point count. When you are able to zoom in on the key areas of concern, you’ll answer like an expert and you impress your audience, and yourself, with your confidence and poise

Evangile de Jésus-Christ selon saint Marc 13,33-37.

Prenez garde, veillez : car vous ne savez pas quand viendra le moment.
Il en est comme d’un homme parti en voyage : en quittant sa maison, il a donné tout pouvoir à ses serviteurs, fixé à chacun son travail, et recommandé au portier de veiller.
Veillez donc, car vous ne savez pas quand le maître de la maison reviendra, le soir ou à minuit, au chant du coq ou le matin.
Il peut arriver à l’improviste et vous trouver endormis.
Ce que je vous dis là, je le dis à tous : Veillez ! »

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J’etais parti pour L’ile de la Réunion pour passé qu’une nuit. Eh bien, le sort, le hasard, ou Dieu en a décidé autrement. Six heures d’attente à l’aéroport Rolland Garros pour être informé que le vol a été annulé car à la tombé de la nuit les vols ne peuvent plus opérer à cause de la contamination possible des vers blancs. Les passagers ont été transférés sur un vol de la mi-journée du Dimanche. Etre prêt et être sur sa garde pour tout imprévu : oui c’est bien cela. Le retard d’un vol est peut-être un événement banal, mais la leçon : d’être prêt à tout moment est bien reçu.

Je ne peux que de me souvenir du motto des scouts que j’ai appris dès mon enfance : BE PREPARED.

Seigneur Dieu, oui j’ai la volonté de ‘Veillez’. Cependant je ne suis qu’un pauvre pêcheur faible et qui se bat. Donne moi d’être fort par Ta grâce, de pouvoir rester ‘ éveiller’ pour être présent et conscient quand Tu reviendras.

Do you know why the name of ile Bourbon was renamed Ile de La Reunion?

Well I shall be in l’ile de la Reunion for today and tomorrow and  shall find out..hopefully.

Until then it would be possible that I shall not have access to my blog. Excuse me dear reader who reads me daily. This was heart warming to recieve yesterday a call from one of my dailyreaders to tell me that I miss a day in my posting.

This was written from the airport internet facility.

 

I invite you to access the link: www.businessballs.com/freematerialsinword/personalitytypesperceptionsmatrix.doc –

The four temperaments – aka the four humours/humors

The Four Temperaments, also known as the Four Humours, is arguably the oldest of all personality profiling systems, and it is fascinating that there are so many echoes of these ancient ideas found in modern psychology.

The Four Temperaments ideas can be traced back to the traditions of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations over 5,000 years ago, in which the health of the body was connected with the elements, fire, water, earth and air, which in turn were related to body organs, fluids, and treatments. Some of this thinking survives today in traditional Eastern ideas and medicine.

The ancient Greeks however first formalised and popularised the Four Temperaments methodologies around 2,500 years ago, and these ideas came to dominate Western thinking about human behaviour and medical treatment for over two-thousand years. Most of these concepts for understanding personality, behaviour, illness and treatment of illness amazingly persisted in the Western world until the mid-1800’s.

The Four Temperaments or Four Humours can be traced back reliably to Ancient Greek medicine and philosophy, notably in the work of Hippocrates (c.460-377/359BC – the ‘Father of Medicine’) and in Plato’s (428-348BC) ideas about character and personality.

In Greek medicine around 2,500 years ago it was believed that in order to maintain health, people needed an even balance of the four body fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These four body fluids were linked (in daft ways by modern standards) to certain organs and illnesses and also represented the Four Temperaments or Four Humours (of personality) as they later became known. As regards significant body fluids no doubt natural body waste products were discounted, since perfectly healthy people evacuate a good volume of them every day. Blood is an obvious choice for a fluid associated with problems – there’d have generally been quite a lot of it about when people were unwell thousands of years ago, especially if you’d been hit with a club or run over by a great big chariot. Phlegm is an obvious one too – colds and flu and chest infections tend to produce gallons of the stuff and I doubt the ancient Greeks had any better ideas of how to get rid of it than we do today. Yellow bile is less easy to understand although it’s generally thought have been the yellowish liquid secreted by the liver to aid digestion. In ancient times a bucketful of yellow bile would have been the natural upshot, so to speak, after a night on the local wine or taking a drink from the well that your next-door neighbour threw his dead cat into last week. Black bile is actually a bit of a mystery. Some say it was congealed blood, or more likely stomach bile with some blood in it. Students of the technicolour yawn might have observed that bile does indeed come in a variety of shades, depending on the ailment or what exactly you had to drink the night before. Probably the ancient Greeks noticed the same variation and thought it was two different biles. Whatever, these four were the vital fluids, and they each related strongly to what was understood at the time about people’s health and personality.

Imbalance between the ‘humours’ manifested in different behaviour and illnesses, and treatments were based on restoring balance between the humours and body fluids (which were at the time seen as the same thing. Hence such practices as blood-letting by cutting or with with leeches. Incidentally the traditional red and white striped poles – representing blood and bandages – can still occasionally be seen outside barber shops and are a fascinating reminder that these medical beliefs and practices didn’t finally die out until the late 1800’s.

Spiritually there are other very old four-part patterns and themes relating to the Four Temperaments within astrology, the planets, and people’s understanding of the world, for example: the ancient ‘elements’ – fire, water, earth and air; the twelve signs of the zodiac arranged in four sets corresponding to the elements and believed by many to define personality and destiny; the ancient ‘Four Qualities’ of (combinations of) hot or cold, and dry or moist/wet; and the four seasons, Spring, Summer Autumn, Winter. The organs of the body – liver, lungs, gall bladder and spleen – were also strongly connected with the Four Temperaments or Humours and medicinal theory.

Relating these ancient patterns to the modern interpretation of the Four Temperaments does not however produce scientifically robust correlations. They were thought relevant at one time, but in truth they are not, just as blood letting has now been discounted as a reliable medical treatment.

But while the causal link between body fluids and health and personality has not stood the test of time, the analysis of personality via the Four Temperaments seems to have done so, albeit tenuously in certain models.

The explanation below is chiefly concerned with the Four Temperaments as a personality model, not as a basis for understanding and treating illness.

early representations of the four temperaments as a personality model

Richard Montgomery (author of the excellent book People Patterns – A Modern Guide to the Four Temperaments) suggests that the origins of the Four Temperaments can be identified earlier than the ancient Greeks, namely in the Bible, c.590BC, in the words of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, who refers (chapter 1, verse 10) to four faces of mankind, represented by four creatures which appeared from the mist:

“As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.” (from the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 10)

Montgomery additionally attributes personality characteristics to each of the four faces, which he correlates to modern interpretations of the Four Temperaments and also to Hippocrates’ ideas, compared below.

 

No easy task, to manage managers. And yet this is essential in any business organisation. Through my carrer I learned the tough way to manage thru managers. Here are some tips which I found that could be very helpful.

Leaders at the third level of accountability are the

backbone of a successful organization.They are the operational

general managers who make sure things happen.

Work at Level 3 moves beyond leading one situation at

a time, or diagnosing a single case, to balancing the needs

and outcomes for a number of different individuals and

sets of circumstances.

Here are the Seven Elements at the third level of

accountability.

1. Nature of work. The key aspect of work at this

level is the delivery of planned performance, while at the

same time continuing to get better performance from

the assets and resources year on year.The essence of

Level 3 accountability is managing a sequence or flow of

work tasks and events, which have to be managed as a

whole, not as a series of unconnected events.

2. Resource complexity. Managers at Level 3 are

not yet accountable for changing the fundamental disposition

of the resources at their disposal. Resources have

to be managed in the context of an integrated system,

unit or head office department.Working at Level 3 often

requires authoritative specialist knowledge.The Level 3

manager is accountable for the identification of potential

managers and their appointment to Level 2.

3. Problem-solving. For the Level 3 manager, problem-

solving involves identifying patterns in the actual

performance of existing products, technology platforms

and systems. Individuals at Level 3 manage a flow of

interrelated problems that need to be prioritized and

solved using the resources within the team.They are not

accountable for strategy and policy but should see the

implications and shortcomings of current practice and

the need to shape different approaches going forward.

4. Change. The essence of Level 3 change is continuous

improvement.Operational scientific change culminates

in Level 3 innovation. It is important to distinguish

between operational innovation, which occurs up to

Level 3, and strategic innovation, which occurs at Level 4

5. Internal collaboration. Managers at Level 3 normally

work across group disciplines, functions within a

business, and sometimes a number of countries, in order

to improve the performance of their unit or department

or to improve the delivery of a process, operational system,

study or project.Managerial leaders are accountable

for their effectiveness in collaborating with peers.

6. External interaction. External contacts atWork

Level 3 tend to be at a national level, in contrast to those

at Level 2, which tend to be local or regional within a

country.These interactions often involve negotiation of

agreements.The response to the external world outside

the organization is reactive. By contrast, at Level 4 the

manager needs to be proactive.

7.Task horizon. Managers at Level 3 are very much

involved in the delivery of the annual plan.A Level 3

manager adds value by looking across individual plans

and budgets and ensuring that their contribution is such

that the whole unit or department meets its time-related

targets.These managers are also expected to make a significant

contribution to the plans and activities of the

following year.

There comes a point when an operational unit is too

large to be run with only two layers of management.One

should be very careful about designing units in excess of

1,000 at Level 3, unless the work is very routine and only

needs minimal supervision or interference.

Je note avec une grande joie l’annonce d’une intention louable et un objectif qui se dirige vers un développement durable. Cela a paru sur l’express du dimanche 23 Nov.

Exploiter l’énergie en abondance qu’est le soleil pour le convertir en Electricité. La technologie existe et elle est déjà exploitée dans des nombreux pays. Il se poserait le problème de rentabilité ? Peut-on produire au jour hui une unité d’électricité au même prix que produise la CEB par ses centrales de production ? Quel sera le prix de rachat que la CEB offrira qui inciteront les individus à investir dans un tel projet ? Doit on que voir une rentabilité pour la CEB dans le présent ? Et quid de notre émission en CO2 dans les centrales thermiques ? A-t-on la volonté politique de mettre en chantier l’exploitation des sources énergétiques propres et non polluantes ?

Nous devons donc encourager ce projet. Je suis pour un retour sur investissement sur les panneaux voltaïques égal au taux bancaire de l’épargne.

■ L’objectif de Chavansingh Dabeedin

Pour la première fois depuis sept ans, c’est un membre issu du personnel même du Central Electricity Board (CEB) qui a été nommé directeur général de cette organisation. Installé à ce poste alors que la question de l’énergie préoccupe le monde entier, c’est à juste titre que Chavansingh Dabeedin s’est fixé comme principal objectif l’exploitation de toutes les sources d’énergie renouvelable disponibles à Maurice. En tête de lice figurent les énergies éolienne, hydraulique, solaire et celle produite à partir de la bagasse. « Pourquoi pas inclure dans nos priorités, l’exploitation du créneau de l’énergie renouvelable produite par les individus et dont le surplus pourrait être vendu au CEB et basculé sur le réseau national ? »

L’Evangile du jour nous dit clairement en quoi nous serons jugés devant le Dieu suprême. IL me nous demandera pas si nous étions chrétien ou combien de biens avons nous amasser en biens et ou encore quelles décoration ou prouesse sont nous reconnu pour ? Nous serons évalués sur l’amour que nous avons donné. Bien entendu l’amour à nos proches et aux étrangers. Puis encore cet amour qui a été partagé une façon inconditionnelle.

Donner à manger et à boire, faire l’aumône pour être reconnu par les pairs, est ce cela de l’amour qu’IL nous exige ? Vêtir un étranger ou visiter un malade ou un prisonnier sans en tirer bénéfice de notre action, soulager la misère et peines des démunis et malades – voila des actes généreux et digne d’un vrai fils de Dieu. La vie de Mother Theresa, sa passion pour les pauvres et démunis ne vient à l’esprit.

Donne nous Seigneur d’être un ‘mother Theresa :’ qui s’est détaché des besoins de possession, de ses besoins de confort, en bref détaché de son ‘moi’ et qui ne voit en chaque individu que Toi présent sur terre.

Last night with very great pleasure, I attended the 100^th year celebration of the Chinese chamber of Commerce in Mauritius. Our family has always participated to the chamber activities. Grand farther, YIPTONG, founder of the family in Mauritius was himself President of the chamber in 1938.

The very able and dynamic President in her speech made a review of the achievements of the chamber and repositioned the vision of the chamber in the perspective of the future with its new challenges. She concluded her speech in wishing the chamber to live up another 100 years.

Objectives of the chamber

To protect and promote the business interest of the Chinese Community in Mauritius

To represent the interest of members vis a vis governmental and non governmental authorities

To promote interaction among traders and industrialists

To facilitate meetings between members and their foreign counterparts

To promote business activities, local and overseas, for the benefits of traders and industrialists

To promote benefits to members of the Chinese Community, during sickness or infirmity or old age and death

From the Souvenir magazine produced for the occasion,I went through the list of founder members and the list of Past Presidents. I found it most interesting to see the names of the persons.

The saga is carrying on. Most of us are waiting for the findings of Cambridge and the decision of the government authorities to solve the problem caused by the leaks. I came across a sensible text of a HSC student to whom I would wish that he earns a scholarship.This is the sort of Elite our country needs.

SEALING THE LEAKING EDUCATION PIPE

“Real Intelligence is absolute, not relative”

In connection with my previous article, I believe that, instead of always cutting away the surplus of unwanted branches in a tree, we should rather remove its roots. This incident can become a blessing in disguise if we decide to tackle the real problem that we face: A dilapidated education system. One of the major problems with our system is that it focuses solely on exams, thereby providing a purely theoretical knowledge taught in a mechanical manner. This has dire consequences, especially for the sciences, as students lack the logical, practical and hands on skills that characterize any area of study. We study not to satisfy our intellectual thirst but to pass exams. The education that we receive is purely academic and does not provide us with the tools we will need to face the global job market of tomorrow. Moreover, the HSC is a make or break factor in providing an opportunity to afford an education at a prestigious foreign university. Being elite, I can count the number of broken dreams just because of someone not being a laureate. Therefore, the real challenge that we face these days is not to find out who are the ones who got tips on “Facebook” or “Blackpapers”, but rather, how do we provide future Mauritians with an all-rounded education that makes them global citizens in the real sense?

First and foremost, after having consulted some Human Resource Managers about the alleged possibility that employers can turn their nose to future job applicants whose CVs include a notorious “Cambridge 2008 A Levels” certificate, it behoves me to tell all my counterparts believing adamantly that this year’s supposedly “tarnished” exam certificate will be prejudiced against their professional careers that they are completely wrong! Many employers do not even ask the applicant when he/she obtained each of his qualifications or will not even have heard about the year 2008 when Cambridge messed its exams up! What matters the most to them is, I quote, “the credentials of the university you have attended, the specifications of your tertiary degrees and the outlook they will have of your personality through your written job application or your interview”. Can you imagine for a second a local or foreign multinational refusing to employ an interesting and motivated student who has freshly graduated with flying colours from a prestigious university such as Princeton, Oxford and Melbourne and who has, as only drawback, a supposedly fake “Cambridge 2008 A Levels” certificate? Willy-nilly, the latter is and will always be a prerequisite of our future local or abroad professional aspirations, irrespective of each exam’s year. Moreover, hypocrisy is a proliferating epidemic among many HSC students, especially among those who throw into question the credibility of their “Cambridge 2008 A Levels” certificate. However, why have the students believing that their future Cambridge certificate will have practically no value in their professional life attended their last examinations when instead, they could have boycotted them? This is because, whatever one’s degree of dislike of Cambridge, one still needs the academic backing of this internationally-renown institution and not vice-versa. My dear Cambridge-hatred friends, when you have convictions, whether good or wrong, you must assume them ENTIRELY and not simply use them as an invisible coat to hide your own cowardice or your naivety!

Regarding the current situation that we face, we must envisage a reasonable solution. I will not take any stance, but rather, present two different schools of thought and let readers draw their own conclusion. Firstly, we could correct the November 2008 papers and keep the results. Then, we hold another exam (if need be, only in required papers) and we compare the two results so that scholarships are awarded only in case of consistent performance (but with regards to the first sitting). That would provide us with more grounds to judge who were the ones having had recourse to unconventional exam preparation. This solution does not bear in mind the stress caused to some students by exams but makes the actual results more credible. Secondly, we could tolerate a small injustice to prevent an apocalypse ahead. We can afford to be lenient this time around because as I mentioned before, it is not as if marking schemes were available online. The answers posted in web forums could well be wrong! Assuming then that this would have an insignificant impact on rankings, we award scholarships but take measures to prevent such resurgence in the future.

Now let me demystify something for all Mauritian students: HSC exams are one component of University applications, NOT THE APPLICATION. There are other important aspects like a personal statement and extra-curricular activities. Universities are not looking for academic geniuses with impeccable results; Imperial College (UK), for instance, takes great pride in rejecting students with three As. They look for academic promise coupled with personal character. They want individuals that can make a difference in their chosen fields. Our education system must therefore mould us into such citizens. Currently, we take Cambridge “A level” courses and focus on only one discipline (Science or Economics or Arts or Technical). Moreover, we never go beyond paper work. Our results come only from our performance in a few papers. However, the International Baccalaureate (IB) System provides a much better alternative. Under the IB Diploma Programme, we would have to take one subject from each of the following disciplines: A first language, a second language, Individuals and Societies, Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Experimental Sciences, and the Arts. Our evaluation would be based on three aspects: An extended essay of about 4000 words, the theoretical knowledge acquired from the six chosen subjects and finally, on our involvement in artistic pursuit, sports or community service works. By providing a multi-disciplinary course, IB provides the all-rounded knowledge that is vital in the job market of tomorrow. The education that we would receive would be much more complete. The essay would help us develop a crucial aspect of our university life-writing skills. Also, involvement in extra-curricular activities would provide us with the required personal qualities of tomorrow’s society, and community service could finally provide some of the much talked about Civics Education. The IB programme must be implemented on a pilot basis to entering form one students in two years time to allow for some teacher training and general system setting up.

At the center of the current debate are laureates. Indeed scholarships are a luxury to those who want to pursue studies abroad as most of us cannot afford such astronomical costs. But why is it that half a mark has to decide between scholarship and no scholarship? I am of the opinion that our leaders should invest massively in Education. We must provide a multi-billion yearly budget that provides both need-based and merit-based financial opportunities to Mauritians wanting to study abroad. However, such a contract must contain a legal binding commitment on the part of beneficiaries to serve their country for at least five years (without any bonds fee payments possible). If our country helps us, should we not help it in return (I am aware of the political realities jeopardizing meritocracy)? Such a budget would not be an expenditure, it would be an investment. If colossal amounts of money can be spent for the organization of extravagant political gatherings at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre, why can’t we finance more university opportunities for our brainy students? Will this investment not prove to be more benefiting than populist gatherings (including the famous “briani” distribution there) to our country’s future? Abolishing the laureate system in view of providing more opportunities would also dramatically reduce private tuitions. Most students have recourse to tuition to beef up their exam preparation in view of the competition. Those who do not compete merely follow through by a snowball effect. But what if the system stopped at 5 As and percentiles? There would be no point in taking tuition at the expense of school work. This would provide more time for other activities that go in the context of a more all-rounded education.

The functions of a school go well beyond Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics. They are associated with the socialization of students. From young children in pre-primary to children in primary and adolescents in secondary, the school harbours a meeting place for exchanges between peers that cut across race, social class or ethnicity. But what is it really like in Mauritian schools? Do we have enough time to engage in team activities? Are friendships not impeded by the fact that friends face a cutthroat competition for scholarships? It is my personal view (backed with knowledge of actual cases) that the intense competition does not favour team involvement. It creates individualistic personalities who have little consideration for others. Now let us take these same students twenty years in time. They will be the future professionals of our economy. Imagine the same students who currently say, I quote, “I do not care about future years, this is the problem of Cambridge and the MES. I am only worried about me!” What type of adult does our system tend to create?

With every disturbance comes the opportunity to emerge stronger. This is our chance to change what is a broken education system. Our education has to go beyond the relative aspect of our intelligence based on “Classified” and “Year By Year” books only. It should touch the absolute nature of our intelligence: our logic. It must spearhead the economic progress of the country by moulding a labour force capable of competition in today’s global market by providing a broader foundation that is multi-disciplinary. It must provide every student with the assurance that “Yes I can dare to dream of studying abroad even though my parents cannot afford it”. The distress caused by the current turn of events can turn the tides. It is up to our leaders to do it. I make a call to all my fellow elites, let us put our personal interest behind and think of those who will come after us!

Written by E.L.I.T.E (Emancipation of Labour-Intensive and True Elite)