Editor,

REFERENCE IS made to the article, "Education vs talent: Which is better?” (Education Times, May 14).

I like this discussion on talent and education. Both are important in constructing the future of our children. What is important is that both education and talent provide opportunities for a livelihood.

For me, education provides an opportunity for talent to flourish—especially for those children who grow up in the rural, poor environment and are not exposed to opportunities and social services where their talents can be nurtured.

For those children, talent can only be nurtured at school, where they are exposed to play based activities like running, playing football, volley and net ball. At school, these children are also engaged in interclass or interschool competitions where their competitive spirit hugely starts to develop.

Furthermore, we expect some of the educators in schools to support children’s talents to grow, at least to provide an opportunity for the children’s talents to be tried and tested and in this case the school provides that enabling environment.

That is why people have always mentioned that life at school should not focus on curriculum related activities as in numeracy, literacy and science, but also extra curricula activities.

HM, Rwanda

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THIS IS a classic case of a futile discussion. Undeveloped raw talent is almost always useless. On the other hand, education—as opposed to training—provides anyone with the basic foundation on which to be trained in specific skills and occupations.

Talent is only latent ability; its practical utility comes out only after it has been purposefully developed through education and training.

Talent is analogous to the DR Congo wealth we are so often told about; incredibly high potential that fails to translate into effective spending power for our Congolese brethren.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda