PUTRAJAYA, May 13 (Bernama) — Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said people need to adapt to new technologies to ensure they are not left out in the new world.

Speaking at the Sultan Abdul Hamid Old College Association (SAHOCA) breaking-of-fast event here tonight, he said the world was going through a new period where teaching in school has to be done in different ways, not in the way when he was in school.

"Nowadays we use computer and things like that in order to teach lessons in school, and I hope they can adapt to this new system of teaching.

"I believe when a new system is adopted by the government, it will make things easier on the children studying today,” he said.

Also present was the prime minister’s wife Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali.

Dr Mahathir, who is the lifelong president of SAHOCA, also recalled his meeting with a 10-year-old chief executive officer of a company who taught him how to use computer.

"She knows much more, in fact she was teaching me something quite new and she was very agile using the computer very quickly.

"She showed me how to do it but I still couldn’t understand which part to press, to pull etc,” he said, adding that it was not easy for old people like him to understand the new technologies.

Dr Mahathir also reminisced about explaining to his mother how a radio functioned after his father had bought the device when he was a child.

"I told my mother that the radio gets news through the air. There is no wire linking the radio to the broadcasting station. But she didn’t believe it,” he said.

Fortunately, he said, the young generation today were able to use new technology because it was not strange to them. — Bernama