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India Rejects One Laptop per Child Program
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."
Maybe the pledge to buy two laptops to donate to get one free really isn't such a bad thing after all. Governments have a difficult time tturning away things that are free.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
How about not? See, we could give the huge population of India food until the rest of the world runs out of money, and it wouldn't help that much. The children need a way to earn their own food, or else nothing will change in the long run. A starving child who can program a computer or manage a business or teach history won't be starving for long, especially in a place like India that is just starting to be recognized as a potential high-level worker pool.
If your current marketable resource is cheap labour, why would you educate your populous with access to world media? Would this not just increase their expectations regarding an acceptable standard of living ? Would this not increase the level of communications between the youth with mesh networks bridging communinities? This level of communications could perhaps lead to a level of organisation that could be a powerful political force? Could this element upset your current long range planning for your country ? Would you take the risk?
Actually, it would take very little money to feed the hungry of the world. The money that third world countries pay out ever year in debt maintenance is greater than the cost of feeding the hungry.
_ more&page=why_drop_the_debt.html
http://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee.cgi?path=/learn
With kids bent over their laptops at school all day, I'd be more concerned about developmental problems in their spines and wrists. And eye problems, depending on screen quality.
But good job on leaping straight to the "brown people must have primitive superstitions" stereotype.
I have been wondering how easy it is for a young child to keep the laptop batteries charged. This would seem to be at least an order of magnitude more demanding than a Lifeline radio.
I do not think you can market a program like this as "One Laptop per Child Program", and it just happens to be from America, and just happens to include the name Negroponte. I mean, I'm not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, I'm an American, but what government will agree to this when it's marketed like this?
Most people question anything that is so cheap that it is nearly free, they ask why if laptops are so cheap that only the third world can have them? Since when did we design laptops or anything of this sort for the third world, or India?
I think these laptops ARE a good idea, I just don't think you can market it like this and expect it to take off, at a time like this when the middle east is falling down the drain. I'm not surprised by India's reaction, India is suspicious of the deal, and who wouldnt be.
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 dependant 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.
Do you know how much ignorance there is in developed nations about same?
Ssshhh... don't let on about birth control education, or the Catholic Church will condemn the program.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
As an almost 30-year-old, I now clearly understand the power of marketing, materialism and peer pressure. As a child, I would have given almost anything to have the toys I saw on commercials and that all the cool kids played with at school. However, when I actually got my hands on them, I found out that they were just as boring as all of the other toys that I had relegated to goodwill. But wait! There is a new cartoon series with cool new robots! And the toys come with laser swords! If only I could get my hands on *these* toys, I would be forever entertained and happy, and never want for anything else in life.
This is a life lesson, not some logic puzzle. Certainly you must be speaking facetiously.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
this is a pretty obvious territorial me too cry. india is notorious for requiring bribes to gevernment officials to get anything done. health effects of computer use are well known, being called ergonomics. the fact that hrd assumes that children will be exposed to "intense" computer use shows they have an axe to grind.
as far as no industrialised nations using this, it is because they do not need to. 1st world nations have money, and quality of life. children are exposed to pc's in schools. we have universal education, healthcare, working toilets etc. india is a shithole. there was an article a while ago that 50% of some of their elected reps do not even have a working toilet. their govt tried to pass a resolution that members must get one, as a an example to others that open defecation is unhealthy. shows how full of shit they really are.
as far as wanting to give children a pc early, there s a simple reason for this. in 1st world nations there is a requirement that children must attend schools to a certain age. this was passed long ago to prevent parents from forcing their children to work as cheap/free labor. therefore it is not really essential to get pc's to children early in such countries. india does not guarantee universal education, and aside from the wealthy elite, there are many deserving children that could benefit from education, and in turn benefit humanity when they get older.
having said this, i can ask one question. who the fuck is hrd to accept or reject such proposals? do they speak for india? its people? its poor? obviously they have done precious little to improve the life of india's poor so far. the term "reject" is classical rhetoric, that implies they had any authority in the first place. another thing to note is that if a large poor section of india gets a working computer, connected to the web, it will very much circumvent the human resources development ministry in india. im guessing this group is responsible for maintaining a cheap labour supply in india to serve the interests of the rich, because it sure as hell wasnt the poor, illiterate, subsitence level majority that put them in office.
these same fud arguments came up when it was time for universal education, when it was time to free the slaves, when it was time to allow women to vote and own property, etc, etc. hrd isn't fooling anyone with their phony concern, and should actually be punished for this stance. if opportunity is denied the indian people to build their lives and country because some branch of beurocrats dont like it, india will always be a shithole.
Thank you for pointing that out. Given the rumored corruption of the government employees out there, I'd like to see how many of these laptops actually do end up in the hands of kids.
Yes actually, I remember spending time in the biology lab with the real ant farms getting taught about group behaviour and navigation which just happened to link in with the lessons about cellular automata and iterative systems in computer studies.
I remember my secondary education tried as much as possible to link lessons together and remember on the whole having good teachers who worked hard to give us a rounded education.
As for needing a laptop to discover the underlying chaotic pulse of the world I call bullshit. Knowledge of patterns doesn't need a computer and recognising the signs of an attractor can be done by anyone looking at the "bigger picture".
Sure, to make pretty graphs and things having a computer handy makes it easier, but its not a requirement.
Just remember this, computers have been around for about 80 years now, smart people have existed throughout history.
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