KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 3 — Malaysia is coming up with edutainment cartoons to entertain and educate children simultaneously, said Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Speaking at a forum in University of Brunei today, Dr Mahathir said one of the major problems he sees facing the younger generation is that they are easily distracted by entertainment and this distraction is “bad for them”.

“There are ways of entertaining children and at the same time teaching them. So we are at the moment in Malaysia trying to produce books using Information Technology so that they will see cartoons and the cartoons will tell them what they need to know.

“That means they are being entertained while getting knowledge at the same time. In the future I think the internet will be the source of knowledge for most people and it will be very comprehensive, almost everything you want to know now can be accessed through the internet,” he said.

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Furthermore, he said he wanted good values to be instilled in children starting from kindergarten as he finds their minds and personality easily moulded before they are influenced by external factors including their peers.

He believed that by instilling positive values such as hard work, diligence, and trustworthiness at a tender age, they will also help to balance out the lack of male students and graduates in universities.

And in order to ensure graduate employability, he said that national education systems should gear itself to face Industrial Revolution 4.0 and prepare graduates according to the needs of the new frontier.

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“Now we are more practical. We plan education to suit the career a person will follow or the ambition of the country. Today most want to study engineering, science and various branches of engineering. It is all about IT, engineering and electronics et cetera.

“When you have an education programme, you need to think about the future of people you are educating. That means you have to know what the market is looking for. If you know what the market wants then you can design the education programme to suit the needs of the market.

“Today, most countries focus on engineering and technology because they are easily employable, and education for the sake of acquiring knowledge is no longer relevant today. Education must be related to the ambition and planning of the country’s future,” he said.