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Bootstrapping Cambodia
Brian Stretch writes "This article in MIT Technology Review left me in awe. "...remote village schools, jacked into the world's online knowledge... Who can help these schools bootstrap, and bring them up to speed with computer skills? The amazing answer turns out to be--orphans.""
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
After all when the powers can be can define morality as they will there is very little reason not to kill people en mass.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Actually, it might do them quite a lot of good. They are getting local people who understand computers (among them the orphans mentioned in the article) to get them setup. Then once you have them wired, in theory one person sitting in the US could teach to several schools at once. And newsgroup access in their local language (even if local servers) could greatly facilitate their learning and exchange of knowledge. Instead of having the expense of flying in individuals to each and every school, you now have the expense of wiring each school.
Basically, as far as the educating part goes, this helps to move the solution from a many-to-many problem over to being a one-to-many problem. It can help in this way by also allowing a teacher of a given subject who is just an expert in one field to 'teach' at all of those schools at once. Much easier than trying to round up a sufficient number of experts for each individual school.
Oh, and as far as needing to learn English to be able to benefit from the Internet (which I would question)... you'd be suprised how quickly those outside of the US can actually learn a new language when sufficient benefit is to be gained. Again, if you pay attention to the article you'd note that "They seemed to be able to chatter in most of the tourist languages...". All it would take is one local student at each school to learn English and that entire school could then access the "English Internet".
Actually, what I'd like to see is a
The particular goods I see arising from a /. charity effort are:
- Yes, we could all just try to go donate to the causes which please us, but it would be cool for
/. to get the credit as the entity which got us to cough up.
- Human nature is such that people who can only donate small amounts (such as students) often don't bother unless they see that it's part of a much larger effort. A sense of the collective might of
/. itself might motivate more people to give even if only a little.
- One big stumbling block to getting people to donate is the amount of trouble it is to do so. I know I am about 10^6x less likely to do anything which requires finding an envelop and a stamp. If there were a simple link to click on to do a pay-pal payment or some such, the odds of my participating go way up.
I would really like to see the amassed hordes of-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
If each of us gave *dollars* it could do miracles. And those of us lucky enough to live in well-off countries (*cough* US *cough*), instead of throwing our drops in the bucket and feeling good about it, what about actually doing something significant like *relieving foreign debt* that keeps poor countries in the vicious borrow-pay-principal-plus-interest-borrow-again cycle? It all leads back to that ugly thing that we all think we are completely above and detached from - politics.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Very true. Just about every nation in the region had real damage done to it by imperialism. There would not have been a Khmer Rouge, or a Pol Pot, without the efforts of imperialists and the fallout from the Vietnam War. But Cambodia faired in many ways worse than most. Vietnam had as many or more problems with foreign entanglements, but now has an economy and social order that is much better recovered. Pol Pot systematically murdered an entire generation of the educated and intelligent people of Cambodia. The actions of the West certainly left the nation ripe for his plunder, but I doubt anyone could have imagined the level of carnage that took place under the Khmer Rouge. The Communists literally emptied the cities of Campbodia, and systematically killed almost every member of the educated classes, from college professors and business people to Buddhist monks and nuns. It's one reason why educational programs like this are so important in Cambodia; these people are effectively missing an entire generation of educated leaders, not to mention that areas of the country have been out of contact with the rest of the world up until the past 5-10 years. The monk Mahagoshananda began leading peace marches in Vietnam in the past years, and in many case his procession of monks and peace advocates were the first contact that some villages had had with the rest of the country since the start of the reign of the Khmer Rouge. New species of large mammels (some the size of cattle) have gone undiscovered in Cambodia up until the past 3 years because parts of the country were effectively cordoned off by left over Khmer fighters, land mines, and destroyed infrastructure. So while imperialist interferance has played a big role in bringing Cambodia to its present state, I would still say that the bulk of the blame for Cambodia's rough economic and educational fortunes lies squarely with the Communist government of the Khmer Rouge.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I was using the term Communist descriptively and not perjoratively, in my own mind, at least. I don't think that the KR were bad because they were Communist. They were bad, and they were communist. I was sticking Communist in there because I didn't want to type Khmer Rouge that many times. I don't think that I ever imply that the most important thing about the Khmer Rouge was that they were communist; the post mentions Communism only twice, I think, once in place of "Khmer Rouge", and once as an adjective. I'm not sure how you are reading a focus on Communism into what I wrote. What to you seems to say that I think the most important attritute of the Khmer Rouge was that they were communist?
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
What I meant was that the Khmer Rouge were not bad because they were Communist, they were bad because they killed many people and destroyed the country. If they were Communist and peaceable, I would have no problem with them. The writer of the earlier post seemed to imply that my problem with the Khmer Rouge was that they were Communist. But to me it is the action that is objectionable, and not the philosophy used to justify it. I do think that Marxism provided justification for the actions of the Khmer Rouge, but Marxism did not dictate it. So my point is just that even if the Khmer Rouge were motivated by some other ideology, I would find their actions just as objectionable, and place most of the blame with them for Cambodia's current state. Now, of course, the actions are greatly inseperable from their motivations, but that is an argument for a history class somewhere. . .
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Boosting self esteem...thats awesome. This is a great example of how other countries can be competitive with america without aggression.
.vbs?
A competitive system is better for everyone involved and does not subtract american prominence in worldly affairs. We already exist in subclasses and groups of every nationality. Will skills in Cambodia be called for in the states? How will our own commerce support developing nations? Will we invite them here, or work with them from afar? Should we support aggressive developing nations? What if a charity breeds a small fleet of khmer outlook hackers, experts in
I am way too paranoid. Those kids sound cool and ready for input. Long live technology!!!!!!!!
-Sleen
(Posted at +2 to make a point.)
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
So, they develop schools to get kids to stop working in sweatshops, and what do they do when they get there? They work for the schools. Not learn AT the schools, but they work FOR the schools.
I think having an 8 year old typing or otherwise demonstrating knowledge is a LOT better than having them sewing Nike sneakers or digging up DeBeers diamonds, but the distinction between schooling and working is still pretty vague.
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This is somewhat along the lines of The Hunger Project, which is attempting to end hunger by empowering the people in those countries to improve their situation. (btw: when they speak of "investors", they're talking about people investing time and money to create a future of people self-sufficient and empowered -- not investing for a monetary feedback.
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
But when these kids can't figure something out, there is a fetus in a tank full of amniotic fluid. He's the real wiz.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
But I'm really just basing that on faith. It's a guess. Is all the money, and all the children's time, a good investment? Will it help create a self-sufficient society? Or are the children spending so much time at school that they cannot scrounge enough food to get by, with little long-term benefit?
It's quite nice to donate money to make ourselves feel better (or so I assume; I'm a cheap bastard), but how do we find out what really works best?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Out there that allows individuals or organizations to donate technology or books to schools in impovrished nations like cambodia?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
12 year old Bgot Thai says "Even though my belly is swollen with hunger and my joints ache from malaria, I can now post on slashdot, until I become too weak to move my crippled fingers to type. Thank you, america"
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I couldn't disagree more. Tens of millions of tech illiterates make an honest living here in the US and we're, arguably, the most technologically advanced nation in the world. Certainly we're in the top few.
Third world countries need things that tech essentially doesn't matter for. Building roads, planting crops, arresting outlaws (we just posted a story on this on poliglut a few days ago which is why this story caught my eye on /.), digging wells, building sewers. None of these require high tech solutions.
So while I agree the method of knowledge dispersal makes a lot of sense, I disagree that you need high tech to teach.
--
I am always inspired by the way people in extreme hardship manage to survive and even thrive.
In the USA, we believe that money can solve any problem, big or small. These kids are accomplishing something really big and learning alot without the big budgets of a suburban US school. My hat goes off to them!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I wonder if in Third World countries today this method could be used or even extended upon? These events in Cambodia sound like just the ticket, but they have extended it to even building the schools themselves. But the big problem today is that you need more than just a piece of chalk, a Blackboard and a teacher for a good education, you need to have computers and all sorts of High Tech devices. The only problem is that the only nations that have the education to make these things can get the money to do the education in the first place, so it is like a Catch 22 situation :(
I just don't quite know how third world countries can break into the cycle. See, I am not a global affairs expert!
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
This is a great program. Unfortunately, the article fails to mention Bernie Krisher, who started the program.
Follow the link from the article, it's a pretty amazing concept. US$14K buys you a new high-tech elementary school in Cambodia, with matching funds from the World Bank and donations from various multinationalcorps. Anybody know anything about this project? This is the first I've heard of it, and although having such remote donors leaves open the possibility of fraud, I think it's really exciting.
/.ers, instead hitting refresh on the SETI@home stats page all day, could each get together $14 for this. If anybody is interested in helping to organize such an effort, pleaes let me know.
Maybe 1000 Team
Can your IM do this?