India Rejects One Laptop per Child Program 374
ex-geek writes "Seems like Negroponte's One Laptop per Child program has been
rejected by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India. Among the objections are concerns about the effect of extensive laptop use on children's health. Better uses for the monies, which would be required to roll out the OLPC project, are also named. Most insightful however is the observation that not one industrial country has so far implemented a similar program for its children, which casts doubt as to what the pedagogical use for notebooks in class really is."
Passing the buck (Score:3, Insightful)
How about (Score:4, Insightful)
MS counter move (Score:5, Insightful)
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 heardf about the plight of Bangladesh? Heard anything lately? I rest my case
Re:Passing the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Industrial Countries have Textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's deeper than that. By giving free shelter or food, you destroy the shelter and food providing industries in the countries. The textile industries in many "third world" countries have been wiped out by cheap or free second hand clothing from the west.
If you get people educated and doing something then the contribute valuably and generate a real economy. Have a look at some of the work of the charity Intermediate Technology to understand how this can happen.
Now it isn't obvious that one laptop per child is the best way to do this, but it also isn't obvious that it isn't a good way to do it. The only way to find out is to do the experiment. The fact that India someone in India rejects it so loudly and publically before it's even been tried suggests less than the best motivation.
Perhaps a little helping hand from Microsoft has been around here?
Re:Going to Africa next week. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not mutually exclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
Good teaching implies using the computer as a tool rather than as a quick fix, some subjects are meant to be difficult some lessons need to be learnt.
Its exactly the same with calculators, know how to use one but only after you have tried engaging your brain first.
I feel this way after visiting a few secondary schools for my son recently, there are some which place the computer on a pedistal as the fix all, and then there are others (notably the 'poorer' schools) which have teachers being more involved and interactive.
*This is not a microsoft dig, it could equally be open office impress or any other program.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding. I've watched school districts in the US spend insane amounts of money on computer technology on the basis of blind faith that computers will automagically improve the quality and effectiveness of education. Even if most such programs were not sabotaged from the start by failing to allocate funds to actually train teachers to use them, there is seldom if ever any effort to measure results.
(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.
Several experiments in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
These poor people need a leg-up, and they need it now. The emerging information market will forget they even exist if they don't learn how to interact with it on its own terms. Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is quickly dead and forgotten.
Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA: "Both physical and psychological effects of children's intensive exposure to the computer implicit in OLPC are worrisome, to say the least.
The psychological aspect seems to be more important and worrisome, IMHO. The things developing children interact with are known to cause a long-standing effect on their psychological development - particularly creativity, analytical skills and imagination. Most people (and geeks) including me can relate to how Legos had a +ve impact on their mental development as kids and how the newer "specialized lego sets" hamper this development by being too restrictive. The same can be said for many other articles/games that kids are exposed to in their developing ears.
I would venture to say that extended interaction with a particular GUI/software/interface could have a negative impact on development of these mental faculties. I'm not saying that it will, but it is quite likely that it will hamper/restrict the child to think only along a certain way, and it is quite reasonable to prevent a large-scale project such as this before adequate medical studies have been done.
Momma... Momma says laptops are the devil (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about (Score:1, Insightful)
Parent AC speaks truth. If we continue to just hand out free food the economy at the low end will never start. What is needed isn't free food, it's someone to teach them to farm their land to the best of its ability, and if anything must be free, then giving them a supply of crop seed to get started. And these have to be real seeds, not the GM "terminator" variety which simply makes the farmers dependent on the generosity of the biotech firms to feed them next year. Throw in some scrap iron for enterprising blacksmiths to turn into plowshares to barter with the farmers for a share of food, and they hit the ground running with trade.
Once everyone has the ability to be fed, then someone'll have to sort out the lawlessness (not so much in India, but many other places) that leads to regional warlords who would simply seize the crops and leave the farmers to starve. This is step two, and even now when we ship free food and medical supplies to these places, theres a good chance that most of that gets seized as well. Once that's been taken care of, then the real work begins.
Once everyone has the ability to be fed and gets fed, we'll start to see the beginnings of real trade again. Mostly local bartering at first, but once the country currency becomes worth something useful, perhaps someone will be willing to truck goods from one city to another instead of growing food for themselves, knowing that the colored bits of paper they receive will permit them to buy a goat and some chickens for their family back home. Once goods start moving outside of the locality, demand will appear for gasoline, trucks, tires, and so on. Radios, TVs, and other sources of news from beyond the next town over will be wanted as well. If the government does not collapse back into corruption and lawlessness, then roads should be getting built and/or repaired at this point. Or perhaps the locals will innovate offroad cargo vehicles that don't require government-built roads. Whether the government wants to or not, the locals' children will learn how to run the family farm, if not how to operate trucks, or repair trucks, or build trucks. Or radios, or TVs, and so on.
Overall the problem is that people from all parts of the economic spectrum believe that someone waves a magic wand and BAM! an economy appears. They're still scratching their heads over post-Katrina New Orleans wondering why workers did not magically appear out of thin air to be paid minimum wage to build houses, then disappear back into thin air at night because they couldn't afford to live in the houses that people wanted them to build. Or why stores didn't reopen right away, staffed by magic dragons and selling milk to the tooth fairy. They simply don't understand that the "global economy" snuffs out any attempt for a fledgeling local economy to form, whether its the free clothes and food coming in, or corporations building call centers and luring people away from their farms for the promise of riches, only to leave them in the dirt later when they find another country to do it cheaper. Either the world must keep its hands off once it's set in motion (until it can stand on its own), or the world must run the entire local economy itself (essentially forever), there is no successful middle ground.
Re:Momma... Momma says laptops are the devil (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you are an unusual case sitting out under one end or the other of the bell curve.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember going over this in psych 101 and even the author of our textbook, Peter Gray [wikipedia.org] seemed skeptical. What is the criteria by which we measure the things children interact with? Does a toddler who only has cardboard boxes to play with grow up stupider than one who has plastic puzzles in primary colors? IIRC, Gray wondered if an inner city child who had no toys, but interacted with extended family in the house and watched cars go by each day was in any less stimulating an environment than a kid who had nintendo or plastic blocks. Is there any objective measurement? The child who interacts with adults is arguably in a more stimluating environment. Understanding, predicting, and manipulating adult minds arguably takes more mental faculties than doing the same with blocks.
When I was a boy, I remember a stick being variously a rifle, a magical staff, a metal sword, a light saber, a spear, even a spaceship. Are my analytical skills impoverished because I ran around in the woods and played with sticks instead of playing the living room with shiny, plastic transformers? I remember being bored to tears by He-Man and G.I. Joe figures that required no imagination -- everything they did was pre-determined. I prefered playing with leaves in puddles or making figures out of mud or clay.
I did *want* those toys that other kids had -- but when I got them, I certainly couldn't play with them. They were much to boring. They just sat on the shelf as models. That's really what they are.
lord (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Several experiments in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the years, a few US states and many individual school districts have experimented with one-student-one-computer, to general positive results
Care to link to these positive results? 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.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, almost everything that is harmful to children is also harmful to adults, though perhaps greater quantities are needed to inflict the same damage to the latter, sometimes.
Thus, you choose your words 'relatively harmful' very well.
Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, education is not a panacea. You can over-educate a population past its economic opportunities and create a variety of problems, from the widescale 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.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2, Insightful)
Exposing children to toxic chemicals and complicated heavy machinery in sneaker factories and similar industrial environments is regrettably one of the ugly necessities of partaking in the spirit of new enterprise that allows us to join the global community. I believe the expression is that "it is required to break many eggs before one enjoys the omelet."
However, instructing our children in the use of a device that may facilitate the exchange of untempered democratic ideas and other destabilizing counter-cultural principles will make it far more difficult for us to promote the adoption of those attitudes and habits appropriate and indeed necessary to ensuring both the continued well-being of each individual citizen, and that of society in general.
Re:How about (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose for the following the survival rate for children is 20% (i.e. horrific).
YOUR IDEAL SCENARIO: you can somehow convince enough people in various charitable organizations to feed the entire child population until they grow up to become unproductive, uneducated (but perhaps self-sustaining) people with mediocre quality of life. Then, when the next generation of children comes along, you're going to have to try to convince the same people (or perhaps different people) again to "think of the children" by giving money. Except this time there will be more children because the previous generation all survived. And somewhere along the lines, people will stop giving money and 80% of the population will die, except that the population by then will be enormous, and that same 80% death rate will represent 100 times the number of people.
NEGROPONTE's LESS-THAN-IDEAL YET REALISTIC SCENARIO: that same money that was going to be used to feed the children is used to educated the children (buy the laptops which in turn give them access to knowledge). 80% of the population dies out. The remaining 20% become well-educated productive members of a society which is now suddenly educated. Business are attracted, people generate income by becoming employees, people use that money to start businesses or their own, and the next generation receives the benefits of their education. This process of course happens much more slowly than one would assume from that description, but it happens nevertheless. 80% of this generations children died (which is truly tragic), but in the long run, the region is better off.
Of course, I think that Negroponte would suggest that people keep the basics-based charity flowing to those kinds of places during the OLPC phase so that we can avoid the pointless loss of life. Regardless, the OLPC money would mean that there wouldn't have to be charity money flowing into those places in a generation or two; My point is that the basics without the education is almost completely pointless in the long run.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Which may be one of the reasons countries reject these laptops. Regressive idealogies, particularly the ones that think women are only good for babies tend to reject that kind of knowledge. I know a girl who used to teach that stuff to women in the villages at the southern end of the philippines and the men there were not happy to have her around (she's a "radical feminist" by
Beyond reproductive health and self-dominion, there are lots of areas of knowledge that many societies would rather not give their children (or adults) access to. Like a pastie-covered boobie at a sporting event.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Several experiments in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
The Alaska Association of School Boards is implementing a 1-1 laptop program [alaskaice.org], based on a similar successful program in Maine [convergemag.com] (which I believe has just gotten its funding renewed). From the executive summary of Maine's two-year retrospective report:
The report notes that there likely needs to be much more professional development and integration of technology into curricula, but it seems that even in its nascent stages the 1-1 program has helped keep students interested in and proactive about their learning, and improved the quality of their work.
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 US 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.
From my own experience, I have been lucky enough to use computers since I began school in the mid-80s, and I feel that they shaped my development in a very positive way. Computers are fantastic tools for teaching critical thinking, reading comprehension, model-forming and abstraction, mathematical concepts (especially geometry), and with the internet, efficient internalization of data from multiple sources. David Chalmers and Andy Clark have argued [consc.net] that external resources, when properly utilized, can effectively become part of our cognitive process. By teaching children to take advantage of the astounding power and resources that computers make available to them, we do them a far greater service than cramming multiplication tables and D'Nelian handwriting exercises [abcteach.com] down their throats for 180 days a year from the age of 5 to 13.
After all, people should be generalists, [metafilter.com] and computers are the generalist's tool. What would we humans be without tools? Shivering, unathletic apes. $100 is cheap [mytoolstore.com] for a tool that
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need more than one computer per classroom - for the teacher to use to do her own job.
-uso.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:2, Insightful)
So because the GP at ten years old didn't possess the life experience and mental framework to rise above pervasive marketing, peer pressure, and peer envy, he's obviously an idiot. And oh no, he changed his mind about something! He's weak too!
Remember kids: snarky, cynical posts are always right, and if you disagree, you're stupid.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:4, Insightful)
The action figure's realm of expression is smaller than a stick's. The robot could be an evil villian in his hideout, or he could be a good guy on his way to saving the galaxy. However, one thing he will *not* be doing is breakdancing, because *his legs just don't move like that*. He can only do a stilted walk. However, because the stick has no features that are going to contradict the impositions of your imagination, you are going to have an easier time playing a variety of scenarios with the stick than with the robot action figure.
It's like the difference between writting fan fiction and creating your own universe. There is simply a greater realm of possibility when you have blank pages. You don't have to follow the rules and
And like I said earlier, I *did* have mass-manufactured toys. At the time I wanted them very badly, but upon reflection I can see that I had much more fun with things like sticks and boxes than I ever did with any action figure. I like action figures and still have some to this day, but they certainly aren't a fountain of imaginative play.
Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande (Score:3, Insightful)
My daughter is 9 and I really don't see much point in her getting, or using, a computer for schoolwork any time soon. She uses mine as a game machine and to send photos to her friends (who she sees at school every day anyway). They have a computer class once a week, which seems to consist of using Wordpad or Paint to make simple documents. I wouldn't like them to spend more time using PCs, it's just a distraction from "real" learning.
However, the Negroponte plan, as I understand it, is meant to provide access to resources (eg, ebooks, the web) not available to students otherwise. (With my daughter, the problem is not access to books, it's persuading her to sit down and read them.) But the Indian report has a point: if the same amount of money was invested in printed books (which are extraordinarily cheap in India) and hiring more teachers, the results would likely be better than providing ebooks. Sadly, of course, if education had the budget priority to fund this programme, it would be at the expense of, not as well as, traditional tools.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd say your creativity and imagination are actually better, not impoverished. This is the whole point — playing with sticks and the like and using your imagination actually enhances your skills, and dumbed-down "don't-bother-to-think-just-watch-this-ooh-shiney
I'm also from India, BTW, where more families have a TV than children going to a decent school.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have a look at a cardboard refridgerator box, you will notice that there is nothing about it that indicates that it is a refridgerator box. It is a box, but it is a *refridgerator* box in name only, not in function. At one time, it may have had a refridgerator in it, or it may have even had a washing machine in it. Maybe it never contained any appliance at all (despite whatever it was originally manufactured for). It is more generic, and therefore has greater possibility in my weakly imaginative mind. The castle playset was sometimes the Hotwheels carwash, but more often then not the shoebox with some holes cut in it was a better all-purpose building in Hotwheels land. Take your Risk example. It's very creative and clever what you and your friends did with the boards. How much more possiliby do you invite if you got rid of the boards altogether? If you got rid of every Risk element? Why, then you have potential for anything and everything.
If I have to imagine that the robots legs can do the splits when it's obviously physically impossible, why should I do all that work? The robot has legs, they look like legs, they move *somewhat* like legs, but only up to a point. It's the uncanny valley phenomenon. Obviously they were designed with the intention to be as much like real legs as possible, but they fail miserably when it comes to actually getting around or kicking bad guys. If it takes all that imaginative work to overcome the robot's malfunctional legs, why not just get rid of the stupid robot altogether? By contrast, the stick has limitless possibility. It wasn't built to be a rifle, therefore it doesn't fail to live up to my expectations. Likewise as the sword or magical staff. It's not an obvious contradiction to my imagination. It can't fail in its role because it *has* no pre-defined role.
I don't understand your argument about the blank page book versus fan fiction. If you write a story and call it Star Wars fan fiction, but it has no Force, no Empire, no light sabers, Jedis, wookies, spaceships, stars, or wars, in what sense is it even Star Wars fan fiction? It would be just as if you had started with the blank pages. What is the myth that an unwritten story has more possibility than fan fiction?
Re:Some Good Points (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. India has nuclear power -- and, of course, nuclear weapons -- plus indigenous satellite launch capabilities, the largest film industry anywhere (a.k.a. Bollywood), the fourth largest economy on Earth measured in purchasing power, the second largest global population and, to top it all off, India is the home to one of the world's oldest pre-industrial civilizations and is the origin of not one but *two* of the world's major religions, Hinduism and Buddism. Somehow, I don't think the Indian government is going to be keen to accept a program that seems adapted to third-world nations, not regional superpowers struggling for first-world status and recognition. Hell -- just based on how much software development is going on in the country, the $100 laptop ought to be a sure-fire winner, so it's hard to justify India's turning down the program for reasons other than politics and national pride.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
I had use of a computer for technology related lessons but had no need for one during most of the other times.
I still have all my reference books and lesson notes available to me from all my lessons, however the only computer data I have access to from before 1998 is locked away on an Amiga harddrive (I haven't even tried to open it recently) - if this was my schoolwork I would be gutted now because I would have lost so much important data.
Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
You need to learn some history (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite colonial occupation that bled our country for hundreds of years
That's what your politicians tell you. Find a non-politician who's 80 years old, who was there, and talk to them. India was better off under "colonial occupation" than it is today. The Brits didn't "bleed" India, on the contrary they unified it, built infrastructure (especially railways) and gave it a legal system.
A country should govern itself, not be governed by foreigners. But you have nothing to be proud of in what your politicians have done in the last 50 years.
OLPC is a crazy idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The government has wisely rubbished OLPC. India cannot progress from slates and chalks to laptop computers in one stroke. It has to progress at an organic rate and accept technology in education gradually, ensuring the teachers are comfortable with it before it gets to the children.
Re:Several experiments in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
The part of this whole computers-in-the-classroom thing that nobody seems to be getting is that a computer is not a solution. A computer is a tool. I place people who wave the computers in the class banner all the time in the same mental category as people who are convinced that $PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE is a gift from God and perfect for every situation.
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?
I agree, these people need a leg-up. I just worry that exporting this educational cargo cult we've been constructing for the past few years to countries that already have even more problems with education than us has more to do with tripping them into the mud than giving them a leg up.