No OLPCs for Indian Schoolchildren

Yesterday we linked The Times of India's report that India's Ministry of Human Resource Development has rejected implementation of the One Laptop per Child initiative in that country. Readers speculated both on why India rejected the program, and whether it's a good or bad move to have done so. As usual, there are some insightful comments with wildly divergent conclusions; read on for the Backslash summary of the discussion to see a handful of the most interesting ones.

jalfreize applauded the move, calling OLPC "a crazy idea," and points out some of the less-obvious costs of the program:

In India, there are basically two kinds of schools — the high tuition, exclusive schools run by Christian Convents or rich, privately funded educational institutions, and the 'municipal' schools run by the government.

Most children that go to the former category of schools come from middle class/upper class families and already have access to computers at home.

Presumably, the OLPC program is for the second type of schools, which mostly children who live close to or below the poverty line attend. Most of these schools will have teachers who have never used computers, and who are likely to resent any drastic technological change such as computers in the classroom.

So, along with an OLPC program, the government would have to run a massive teacher-education program to teach the use of these computers in the classroom — not to mention overhauling the coursework so that it makes effective use of these machines.

In addition, the government would have to put in place infrastructure to service and repair these laptops at affordable prices throughout India.

All of this to be done in a country of more than a billion people speaking hundreds of known languages and dialects.

When you think of these factors, those laptops are going to cost way more than the $100 MIT claims.

I could go on and on about the fallacies of this scheme, but clearly, it would be crazy for India to adopt it at this point in time.

Sensing more sinister goings on, reader bstadil calls the decision the result of an "MS counter move":

Gates has been courting India for quite a while. This move is a political move nothing to do with the merits of the program.

I really don't care about India but would love to see Bangladesh adopt the OLPC program. They have thanks to Yusun and his Microloan program almost eradicated poverty so they seem to be a more innovative people. Remember 10- 15 years ago you almost always heard of about the plight of Bangladesh? Heard anything lately? I rest my case.

Reader eln takes the Ministry's objections at closer to face value, writing

Also, the concern about health effects may seem silly, but there have been plenty of cases where things that were relatively harmless for adults turn out to have adverse effects on still-developing children. Given this, and given that these children would presumably be using these laptops for many hours a day, asking for studies on this does not seem unreasonable.

While the OLPC program may have suffered a setback in India, reader Gord says it's

Worth pointing out that according to this brief article, Nigeria has ordered 1 million of these laptops at $100 a throw.

Nigeria's government isn't the only one who holds out hope for the benefit of a cheap, low-powered but durable computer. Danzigism is one of several readers who thinks that the OLPC hardware has a brighter future if it was made available on a larger scale:

I think they just need to market the damn things.. i'd gladly pay $150-200 for one, for my kid — just manufacture them damnit! I think the idea is great to give kids these things and all, but I'd rather buy the kids tons of books and put the money into providing them a good education, with good teachers and a nice working environment.

Reader theCat defends computer-per-pupil programs, and says that "[s]everal experiments in the U.S." have resulted in "general[ly] positive results," writing

I think anyone who says "feed them first, then give them a computer" misses the point that if all you do is ever feed people and then move on, that's as far as they get. I get the impression that while most people living in poverty will happily accept a meal, they will likewise fight hard and loudly to better their condition even at the risk of someone going without a meal in the process. You don't have to be a rich Western geek to understand that filling your belly today doesn't guarantee a full belly tomorrow, and food aid is notorious for drying up once a current crisis is abated.

Reader Bastian responds to that, writing

As a former student of a school with a one-student-one-computer program, I'd like to point out that I'm not convinced by the positive results people are reporting. When you spend God-only-knows-how-much-money and muck around with kids' educations with a program like this, admitting you screwed up is just about the dumbest thing a person could possibly do. I can't speak for anyone else, but my high school really screwed up with that idea. That didn't stop the administrators from bragging and bragging and bragging as if these laptops had turned everyone into a genius child. (Rather than just being one more distraction.)

... If we want to fix up our schools, we should start by reviewing our crufty old educational plan that hasn't been revised for decades and basically ignores all major research on how people learn. Once we have a new plan, we can go about figuring out how to implement it. I'm sure that computers will be the best way to implement some details of the plan, but they should be used only for those things, and if it turns out that there's a better way to do something else (lectures, for example, are almost guaranteed to suck if PowerPoint is involved), then they should be avoided.

But stuff like the OLPC program seem to work from the assumption that computers are this magic bullet that will instantly improve education — through some hand-wavy magic computron field, maybe?

Reality Master 101 asks for a link to positive results mentioned by theCat, writing

I've only seen studies that show how overall useless, if not negative, computers are in the classroom, especially when you give them to students. They get broken easily, they're generally used in non-educational ways, and they're a big distraction. I doubt you can find some clear, unambiguous gains for students with laptops.

Reader loquacious d offers the disclaimer that he is "currently contracting with several Alaskan organizations in the area of education technology," along with a defense of encouraging computers in schools:

One neat thing about technology in schools is that it lets you do completely new kinds of schoolwork. A new kind of project that many of my English-teaching acquaintances are starting to like is the fake-novel-movie-adaptation-trailer, or artsy-literature-inspired-music-video. Going outside the bounds of the traditional two-page book report or reading journal really helps students think differently and more deeply about the subject (especially for students not compatible with the text-based U.S. school system). Film also really lends itself to literary tropes like symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony. This kind of thinking is just not possible (or at least very difficult) without prevalent access to technology. I've heard anecdotally that music students love GarageBand for recording state honor band/choir audition tapes, or just for practicing in general (recording yourself is notoriously one of the best ways to figure out all the myriad ways you suck). And the sheer amount of good information and media available on the internet is rapidly rivaling even the best-equipped public school libraries.

Obviously the $100 laptop isn't going to be a great video editing machine (though, if you can do it on an Amiga [wikipedia.org]...), but even the basic functions of word processing and Internet capability (the Wikipedia, for chrissake! how great would the world be if everyone had the Wikipedia?) have the capability to dramatically improve the baseline quality of education for developing populations.

In a separate thread, reader Angst Badger was broadly skeptical of the educational value of computers in the classroom, but did spot a few exceptions:

To be fair, while I was working for a school district, I saw some really creative uses of computers, but these were a) the exception, and b) still not very good uses of money compared to other things that it could have been spent on.)

The other problem that is not often considered at the outset is the maintenance cost. A school district full of computers needs a full-time support staff, which takes away money that could have gone to hiring new teachers and reducing class sizes, and it also requires regular replacement. One-third of the IT budget for the district I worked in was devoted to replacing obsolete machines.

Surprisingly, the best use I saw for computers was reducing the amount of time it took teachers and staff to take attendance and collate grades. That actually did some good because teachers had more time to teach.

Readers debated at length the difference between the use of laptops in education in poor countries compared to rich ones; one argument, as phrased by reader xzvf, is that Industrial Countries have Textbooks:

Industrial countries have and can pay for nearly new textbooks to give to each child. Most parents in industrialized countries have computers their children can use. OLPC replaces books and gives the entire family access to information.

To another reader's question about "the pedagogical use for notebooks in class," twofidyKidd jokingly offered "two words": Sex Ed.

That, according to Capt'n Hector, isn't funny.

Not funny. Insightful. Do you know how much ignorance there is in developing nations about STDs, birth control, pregnancy, etc?

To that, Jherek Carnelian says

Which may be one of the reasons countries reject these laptops. Regressive ideologies, particularly the ones that think women are only good for babies tend to reject that kind of knowledge.

Many comments focused on the seeming incongruity of providing high-technology in the form of laptop computers rather than what is conventionally described as "humanitarian aid" to countries plagued by more immediate problems, such as extreme poverty. StefanJ says these are not mutually exclusive:

There is no reason not to simultaneously provide medical aid, food aid, aid to repair infrastructure, and etcetera, and computers. That is a phony dichotomy.

One of the big failings of aid and development programs in the past has been a lack of appropriateness; clueless big projects which do little or nothing to help.

It is possible that the One-Laptop-Per-Child project is one of these clueless projects. It could, however, end up as a sort of force multiplier, a source of intelligence (in the "information" sense of the word) and a form of feedback that would let aid organizations know what is really needed and where.

Reader Senzei also chides as simplistic the argument that computers aren't appropriate until more basic issues are resolved:

Yep, there are a lot of people with really basic needs. Too bad there are not more educated members of society with the ability to communicate those needs to each other and organize some aid. It would be awesome if someone could help give an education boost to those countries that are above starvation but not yet affluent enough to really provide a lot of help. Oh wait...

pherthyl addresses one of the , writing

The side effect of feeding the hungry is that it effectively destroys their entire local food production business. The farmers who previously supported themselves selling food can't compete with free and are suddenly themselves dependent on handouts to survive.

Do some reading on how the flood of donated clothes from the western world destroyed the textile industry in many areas of Africa. Handouts are a terrible long term solution.

Reader Whiney Mac Fanboy distinguishes good aid from bad, writing

Depends on how its done. Aid agencies such as Oxfam have recognised this for a while — and rather than importing food to troubled areas, try to either give locals money to buy food or buy from local farmers.

Government agencies don't particularly like that however, as they'd rather spend their aid budget within their own country, helping their own farmers (its amazing how much of the average first-world nation's "aid" budget will be spent within that country).

Finally, Lemmy Caution offers a note of caution that probably applies to any computers-in-classrooms project, but in particular ones along the lines of the OLPC project, which aim to increase educational opportunities by spreading technology through charitable and other low-cost measures to the developing world:

[N]ot all markets work the same: housing is sui generis (particularly when it is land and location that is the cost-driver.)

Also, education is not a panacea. You can over-educate a population past its economic opportunities and create a variety of problems, from the wide-scale loss of the best-and-brightest to other countries, to a population of resentful, overeducated people who are only able to find jobs in the lower ranks of the agricultural and industrial sectors (this is much of what happened in parts of Latin America -- the Sendero Luminoso of Peru was largely officered by a generation of well-educated poor youth who found no job opportunities awaiting for them after their much-vaunted education was finished.)

England did not have the most widely educated population back when it was the richest, most powerful nation in the world. I think you might find the correlation between education and prosperity, historically, to have a number of suprises.

---

Many thanks to all the readers who took part in the discussion, in particular those whose comments are quoted above.

How about...

[RagingFuryBlack (956453)]

...a help-desk job for every child! Wait, they have that already!

Oookayyy...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Worth pointing out that according to this, brief, article Nigeria has ordered 1 million of these laptops at $100 a throw.

Put aside that they're not going to be making these at the $100 point for the foreseeable ever...

So you idiots think that India isn't ordering these under pressure from Microsoft, but Nigeria, where the son of the president/dictator works for Microsoft, *is* ordering a million of them?

I think the benefit depends

[capedgirardeau (531367)]

Something I waited to see if it got mentioned last time around but I never saw it come up was this:

If there is an existing infrastructure for education, buildings, teachers, books, pencils, paper, etc. then it might make more sense to focus on those traditional things rather than blindly say that computers in the classroom are a good thing and throw money at them.

However, the target for these $100 laptops are places where there is no infrastructure, no books, no classrooms, nothing. Now when starting from scratch like that I think you get more benefit from every child having a laptop right off the bat than from trying to build up the more traditional type of educational system like we have in more developed contries.

It is sort of like saying that countries should have to build out traditional analog phone line systems rather than start out with cell phone systems which are so much less physical infrastructure intensive. That doesn't make sense, why force them to build the type of thing we are moving away from just for the sake of making them do it they way we did.

Also, I haven't heard anyone mention what I read was one of the more off beat benefits of the $100 laptops:

The provided light for the whole hut at night. I am not joking, when asking for feed back from the parents of children who were testing the idea, the parents said they thought it was great because it was by far the brightest light they had at night.

Re:I think the benefit depends

[kabocox (199019)]

The provided light for the whole hut at night. I am not joking, when asking for feed back from the parents of children who were testing the idea, the parents said they thought it was great because it was by far the brightest light they had at night.

Go study kids, I need the light!

Good grief!

[Otter (3800)]

Which may be one of the reasons countries reject these laptops. Regressive ideologies, particularly the ones that think women are only good for babies tend to reject that kind of knowledge.

Uh, yeah. India is run by a regressive ideology that restricts access to computers and the Internet in order to suppress feminism. You guys are obsessed with the prospect of losing your jobs to them, but as soon as they're insufficiently besotted with Linux (or insufficiently anti-Microsoft), they're Talibanistic Luddite savages.

Re:Good grief!

[jc42 (318812)]

Uh, yeah. India is run by a regressive ideology that restricts access to computers and the Internet in order to suppress feminism.

Back in the 1970s, I read about an interesting social experiment that was done in India. The experimenters picked a number of villages at random, and made arrangements to supply the local clinic with various kinds of birth-control methods at a reasonable price. Then they started watching the vital statistics.

A year or so later, they reported that 9 months after the experiment s

Re:Good grief!

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

I've read a number of other observations that birth control is easily available in a lot of India, but totally unavailable in other parts. The availability is strongly correlated with the political power of the local religious leaders, as it is in much of the rest of the world.

I admit this is hearsay, but at least I've heard it a couple of times. In the Philippines, probably the strongest bastion of catholicism left in the world, there are no condom factories. This is also a country where families regular

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

I married a girl from India. I have plenty of standing to say that culturally India has a long way to go.

Sure the educated elite tend to have modern values, although there are still plenty of dark undercurrents that manifest in ugly ways. But the vast majority of the population that is still gripped in poverty is also still gripped with regressive social attitudes.

As I said in a similar rebuttal:

1) How many dowries are paid each year in India?
2) How many bride burnings are there each year in India?
3) Who

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[The Cydonian (603441)]

Thank you for your response. I'm sure all of your points successfully demonstrate that the Indian government is banning the free distribution of laptops to school-kids because it isn't progressive enough.

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[The Cydonian (603441)]

The point is that regressive attitudes are pervasive enough that even if the educated elite at the top levels of politics think it is a good idea, they know enough to expect plenty of pushback from their constituents that they could easily decide that it is not worth the fight.

There was no mention about free access to porno in the linked article. And neither is this a measure to provide free broadband, merely to provide laptops to kids.

The thing bothering me is this. In a discussion on, say, women's rig

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

"laptops are evil because you can get porno".

Where the hell did I say that?

Are you reading some sort of alternate universe bizzarodot?

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

1) How many dowries are paid each year in India? :Some, but mostly voluntary

Voluntary? Get a grip. People don't "voluntarily" pay dowries, it is purely social pressure. You know, from a regressive society.

2) How many bride burnings are there each year in India? :Less than in Pakistan and Bangladesh

And orders of magnitude more than in any 1st world country. This discussion is not about Pakistan, Bangladesh or Antarctica. Do NOT even try to excuse such behaviour by saying others are worse.

3) Who killed Ph

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

the greater poverty of a semi-theocratic dictatorial pseudo-democracy like Pakistan is ignored...

List of some countries (with India in it) ranked by Gini index (bear in mind that lower gini index is better)

India 32.5
Pakistan 33

Looks like the Gini Index has a flaw if the "greater poverty" of Pakistan is only a half-point worse. Not that it matters, since Pakistan's problems regarding repression of women are Pakistan's problems, not India's. The question at hand is simply, is India's society regressive towa

Re:Good grief!-Logic takes a dirt nap.

[Jherek Carnelian (831679)]

reiterate my claim that to compare India with a country like the USA is loaded and unjustified.

Then ignore each line of stats that says USA - that was for the guy who started with the USA comparisons. Concentrate on the part of each India line that applies to males and then the part that applies to females.

That is the ONLY comparison that matters when answering the question - "Is Indian society regressive towards women?"

When you accept that the answer is "yes," -- not "foo is worse" -- then you have arriv

priorities

[WinEveryGame (978424)]

yeah, clean water for every child is more important and urgent than a laptop. Any surprise?

OLPC work is worthwhile

[Tet (2721)]

I'm personally unconvinced about the whole idea of OLPC. However, I hope the project succeeds for completely unrelated reasons. OLPC is prompting a whole raft of work aimed at slimming down the Linux userland, in order to make it usable on the modest hardware available. That can only be a good thing, given the recent trend towards bloat.

Nigeria's purchase of 1 million of these:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Dir sir,

Firstly I must solicit your confidence in this matter. Let me introduce my self I am Tijani Yusufo credit officer for the Union Bank of Nigeria

CRANK CRANK CRANK CRANK

I need to transfer a large sum of money out of my country to a foreign account requiring maximum confidence

CRANK CRANK CRANK CRANK

Here is my proposition....

Re:Nigeria's purchase of 1 million of these:

[indifferent children (842621)]

... I will send you $100M USD, to buy laptops for Nigerian children, if you kindly send me $5,000 USD to assist with transaction fees.

My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[LaNMaN2000 (173615)]

My Mom was a public school teacher for 13 years and very quickly discovered that the problem with our educational system was not the lack of technology. As a math teacher, she saw that many students relied on their (graphing) calculators to do even simple arithmetic as a result. The main problems she saw in low income parts of the county were lack of parental involvement, peer pressure not to do well in school (particularly when she taught poorer students), and a lack of ambition or motivation. When she taught in a higher income part of the county, she felt that many parents would push too hard for their kids to be honors classes, where they performed poorly and diminished the quality of education for other students.

In short, the problems afflicting the education system, in the U.S. at least, are social not technological. Presumably, elsewhere in the world, this is the case, as well.

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[pete6677 (681676)]

I totally agree. Lets not forget another leading reason for academic mediocrity: teachers unions. They are only in favor of "reforms" that put money in the union's pocket. Overall, they prefer to keep the schools shitty since they can use poor student performance as an argument for "more educational funding", nevermind that historically schools have NOT gotten better as more money is thrown at them. Get rid of teacher unions, cut the school budgets, and maybe then some real progress can be made.

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[saforrest (184929)]

Get rid of teacher unions, cut the school budgets, and maybe then some real progress can be made.

What the hell? I mean, sure there are bloated unions, but the idea that removing unions entirely and cutting money to schools would somehow improve the educational system is so obviously ludicrous it shouldn't need to be said.

Unions need to be kept in line, sure. But so does management.

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[TheShadow (76709)]

The real problem is that government runs the schools. And as we all know, government usually finds a way to fsck everything up.

I'm in favor of publically funded, but privately owned and operated schools. Let parents choose what schools their kids go to and let the public funds follow them. We'll see how fast underperforming schools shape up when there is profit motive.

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[kamapuaa (555446)]

Private schooling and profit-motivated schools just doesn't work well with a meritocracy. There's plenty of examples throughout the world. When having rich parents is a requirement for going through a decent school, Social Darwinism just doesn't happen. It's a basic American value and a fundamental trait to Capitalism - Adam Smith thought the only two responsibilities of a Federal government were a Navy and a public school system. He didn't even think standing armies were necessary, in a time of worldwi

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[TheShadow (76709)]

You obviously didn't read my post and immediately jumped to conclusions.

It's a shame that people automatically shun any idea that doesn't involve throwing more money at failing schools. If a restaurant continues to serve food that tastes terrible, people will stop going and it will eventually go out of business. However, schools that continually fail to perform just get more and more public funding and little or no change in management (for lack of better term).

I believe schools should be publically funde

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[RoffleTheWaffle (916980)]

Agreed. Having gone to a public school, I can safely say that lack of motivation, the absence of parental involvement, or overbearing parental involvement will drive any student to the bottom of the class pretty quickly. (That, or to the bottom of a bottle. Do you ever wonder why so many jocks become alcoholics? It's not because they're having a good time. Not that I actually pitied the jerks, but it's not like anyone with half a brain couldn't see that they were miserable from being pushed too hard by thei

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[vertinox (846076)]

As a math teacher, she saw that many students relied on their (graphing) calculators to do even simple arithmetic as a result.

Depends... As one person said:

"Never memorize anything that you can look up." -Albert Einstin

Depends on how basic that math is and if you will always have access to do that calculator. If I need to find out if my $20 dollars is enough to by eggs, milk, and a six pack of beer I should be able to do that in my head.

However, if I need to calculate the velocity and trajectory of a swallow travling at two knots after being hit the 747 traveling at 258 mphs... I should get better tools.

Truth is... Its not memorization that makes man great, but the ability to utilize his tools. Without Google and Wikipedia, most of us would be nothing... But the same could be said if tomorrow we woke up with electricty, running water, and gasoline and were forced to live in caves.

The people that will be successful in the future will be those who can utilize those tools better than others. Sure today we don't have a TI calculator on us at all times (well most of us anyways) but someday kids will have computers implanted directly into their neural nets and the need to manually do calcuation of how much my $20 will buy in the year 2045 (well not much) will become a moot point... Because not only are they able to do it without memorization, but they can do it faster than a fellow with just a non-enchanced brain.

Same goes with a kid with a laptop and a kid without....

Re:My Mom Was A Public School Teacher

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS (313647)]

"Never memorize anything that you can look up." -Albert Einstin

You got the quote wrong. I find that very amusing.

I think it's a good thing they rejected this

[MikeRT (947531)]

Here in America we may look down on that decision, but our schools have fallen apart precisely because we have allowed so many different distractions from the "3 Rs." I applaud the Indian schools for rejecting this because it is a decent idea in theory, but not for those who are already getting left behind by badly staffed and equipped public schools. What India needs is a competitive market for education, not cheap laptops.

What the poor countries really need are:

1) Good government that is limited, efficien

Re:I think it's a good thing they rejected this

[vertinox (846076)]

3) Populations with a good, liberal education that isn't just focused on math and science.

Umm... No.

If you haven't been paying attention most of those 3rd world nations are getting better because they are sending their kids here to get taught in math and science.

Sorry to say... A PHD in Philosophy, Political Science, or Liberal Arts isn't going to feed your family. Sure it might do wonders for culture, but I know so many friends who are art majors who actually do other things for a living than what they wen

How to think

[nasch (598556)]

Film also really lends itself to literary tropes like symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony. This kind of thinking is just not possible (or at least very difficult) without prevalent access to technology.

It's hard to think about symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony without access to technology? This might be the dumbest thing I've read on /., and that is really saying something.

One problem with selling it to the developed world

[TubeSteak (669689)]

Danzigism is one of several readers who thinks that the OLPC hardware has a brighter future if it was made available on a larger scale:
I think they just need to market the damn things.. i'd gladly pay $150-200 for one, for my kid -- just manufacture them damnit! I think the idea is great to give kids these things and all, but I'd rather buy the kids tons of books and put the money into providing them a good education, with good teachers and a nice working environment.

The only problem with that is you'd get

Re:One problem with selling it to the developed wo

[vhogemann (797994)]

And who would buy one from the Nigerian children?

If:

A) Every children got one for free at school

B) It's almost useless unless you're a children, or a geek

Take a look at the machine specs... Sure, if it was an average laptop, able to run Windows, MSOffice and all sort pirated applications and games some people would buy it from the children, but given the laptop specs and software it seems very unlikely.

Costs too high + info

[kgruscho (801766)]

$100 a PC is a fortune in comparison to the amount that would be needed to ensure basic literacy.

India actually has a giangantic problem with basic literacy. Even though the country produces so many engineers and doctors, many of its people cannot read. If India could get the money to buy the laptops it would be better spent on making 1st-5th grade education universal. And at least by estimates from the 1990s, the price would be quite similar, with the five years paper and pencil education being cheaper.

(fr

tradeoffs and cultural appropriateness

[belmolis (702863)]

Even if it were clearer than it is that providing laptops has educational advantages over not providing laptops, it still would not be clear that this would be the most effective investment of India's money. It's one thing to ask whether a well-off community in the US should provide laptops and quite another to ask the same question in India. Given limited resources, I don't find it at all difficult to believe that the rational decision in India is to invest in teachers and teacher training, textbooks, and

The New Math

[westlake (615356)]

OLPC reminds me of own brief flirtation with The New Math (Tom Lehrer) [calstatela.edu].

The academic in the university produces a theory and a textbook, a new way of teaching math, but engagement with parents and teachers is superficial at best.

"help! help! I'm being repressed!"

[zephc (225327)]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the caste system still deeply ingrained in modern Indian society. That may be (at least at subconscious levels) partially to blame.

Indian Govt rejects OLPCs

[ken_ganti (991541)]

After spending time in the higher educational system in India, I think that the Govt. of India is making a mistake. While making sure that food, clothing, potable water should be made available, in a country like India, the political reality is that these services are intentionally not provided. The impovershed are the tools of political parties and bosses that benefit from the lack of education, literacy and common sense among the masses. The masses are reduced to only understanding emotional rhetoric. They are given sachets of foot, a fifth of quarter of alcohol and a movie ticket to vote for a particular candidate. By providing computers for poor children, there is a good chance that the natural curiosity of these children can be harnessed and polished. Their parents are condemned to the working class and the future of these poor children is bleak at best. By not provided these OLPCs, the Indian government propagates the widening of the digital divide. By providing computers and efficient networking, children in the lower socioeconomic strata can virtually 'leapfrog' forward in terms of their ability to learn. By creating a more educated electorate will help the country, but hurt the current political bosses. Add information technology to the list of have not's (in addition to potable water, food, clothing, education, hope...). I welcome feedback in a civil debate...

Adult Usage

[PineHall (206441)]

I wonder how many of these laptops will end up being used by adults for the family business? This may not be a bad thing. The parent gives the child a task of finding out how this laptop can help them in their business, or how the laptop can help them start a new business. The parent and the child will learn something about using computers and the family income will rise.

Incorrect.

[The Cydonian (603441)]

In India, there are basically two kinds of schools the high tuition, exclusive schools run by Christian Convents or rich, privately funded educational institutions, and the 'municipal' schools run by the government.

As a proud "old boy" of a government-run, "public" school, I have to strongly disagree. There are very good schools in the governmental sphere as well, just that they don't advertise that heavily in the local papers.

Gates Foundation $$$

[John Harrison (223649)]

A family member now works for the Gates Foundation. In conversations with her prior to her employment there she mentioned that after the GF gave enormous amounts of money to India for combating disease that many of the government's Linux and Open Source initiatives died almost instantly. The Gates Foundation does a lot of good, but the money comes with strings attached. It is for that reason that I was very sad that Warren Buffett elected to give away his fortune through that organization.

Re:Got a better idea....

[ch-chuck (9622)]

Even better is birth-control and responsible parents who've decided they can afford to feed and shelter a child.

Re:Got a better idea....

[Homology (639438)]

Even better is birth-control and responsible parents who've decided they can afford to feed and shelter a child.

Sex education in schools seems to be a taboo in USA, unless you count the religious right preaching of "no sex before marriage" as education.

Re:Got a better idea....

[Homology (639438)]

Nice article that shows that sex education is a bit "limited":

And in spite of the fact that only 15 percent of Americans say they want abstinence-only sex education in the schools, 30 percent of the the principals of public middle schools and high schools where sex education is taught report that their schools teach abstinence-only

Re:Got a better idea....

[by Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what an original and insightful idea.

Oh wait, nevermind, 900 other people have already brought it up, and it's already been debated [slashdot.org].

Please note, I took that link directly from the front page of this article. Please read an article before posting your worthless comment, which was clearly as well thought out as putting out a fire with gasoline.

Re:Got a better idea....

[spencer1 (763965)]

I think supporters of OLPC believe that it falls under "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish ...". If you simply give aid to these countries, aid will have to be given to them year after year; however, this can be solved if they are educated to be able to provide for themselves.

How about them eBook savings?

[A nonymous Coward (7548)]

One of the benefits of the cheap laptop is that textbooks are cheaper and easier to distribute, thus saving enough money to pay for the laptops. Plus you get up to date texts, and in your own language, especially if you write them yourself, which would mean no royalties from your foreign currency reserve. And the kids can take them home with them easier than lugging pounds of real books.

Yes, please do.

[A nonymous Coward (7548)]

We are talking about kids learning to read who have no access to ANY physical books, and the cost of getting physical textbooks to them is so prohibitive that they might get one book per school, and that will be a donated book from the first world, inappropriate, out of date, and in a language they can't read, but maybe they will be lucky to have a teacher who can read and translate some of it.

This has nothing to do with novels to read while commuting or lying in a hammock. Thsi has everything to do with k

Re:Save a billion

[AuMatar (183847)]

Tha laptop is using Linux (and I believe open office).

Re:Save a billion

[megabyte405 (608258)]

Actually Linux, a custom interface known as Sugar, and AbiWord - www.abisource.com - a specially-customized OLPC version is being worked on right now.

Excellent points but . . .

[StefanJ (88986)]

I don't think it should be the Project's job to write the software themselves.

They should provide guidance, SDKs, maybe even funding, but the software and materials should be home grown.

For one thing, local educators will best know what their students need.

For another, this is a chance to employ the local talent.

Imagine if Nigeria and/or some NGOs started employing all those computer-literate kids who are sending out 409 letters to instead do some useful coding!