Suu Kyi chides youth for ‘wasting time’ on Internet

18 January 2016
Suu Kyi chides youth for ‘wasting time’ on Internet
Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: Thet Ko/Mizzima

Myanmar youth are wasting too much time on social media and playing Internet games at the expense of reading, Aung San Suu Kyi said in a letter posted online this week.
“Our lifestyles are changing nowadays as technology improves,” she wrote in a letter to the Nobel-Myanmar Literary Festival on Saturday, but she lamented:
“Now our children waste a lot of their time on computer games, Internet games and social networks. Children read less because the use of technology has increased.”
The letter went on to criticize education standards, citing the government’s chronic underfunding of public and higher education and the prevalence of memorizing material rather than critical analysis skills.
“We rarely have libraries in our schools,” she said. “Our education system is about learning by heart and answering questions.”
Suu Kyi attended Oxford University and is known for being slow to adopt the use of computers in her personal life.
Myanmar’s 2015-16 education budget included a slight rise over last year, which will go toward hiring additional teachers.
Education and health care are among the two most under-funded sectors in the annual budget, and educators complain of a lack of textbooks and low teacher pay.