Slashdot Mirror
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."
north korea
[place
working towards a 'food and shelter for every child' program first
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
Help fight continental drift.
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?
Nobody has to go first. There are already plenty of schools in this and other industrialized nations that provide laptops for every student. Studies need to be done to determine if those laptops actually help (or perhaps hinder) learning in these schools. It would be silly to spend billions of dollars a year providing every child with a laptop if there are no studies that indicate there is any educational advantage to every child having a laptop.
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.
India has too many people already. I recommend a "One Child Per Laptop" program! :)
Worth pointing out that according to this, brief, article Nigeria has ordered 1 million of these laptops at $100 a throw.
"...which casts doubt as to what the pedagogical use for notebooks in class really is."
Sex Ed.
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
Industrial countries have and can pay for nearly new textbooks to give to each child. Most parents in industialized countries have computers their children can use. OLPC replaces books and gives the entire family access to information.
I think they're still working on their "one missile per child" campaign.
Though before that gains any momentum they'll probably need to complete their "one functioning missile" campaign.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
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.
As with all computer use, I would recommend caution against sitting kids down and using powerpoint* to set them up in life.
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.
liqbase
Studies need to be done to determine if those laptops actually help (or perhaps hinder) learning in these schools.
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.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Over the years, a few US states and many individual school districts have experimented with one-student-one-computer, to general positive results. It's not without its detractors, of course, and I suspect that lately these programs have to a degree fallen under the wheels of the "teach toward the test" canflagration now sweeping the nation.
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.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
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.
"The things developing children interact with are known to cause a long-standing effect on their psychological development - particularly creativity, analytical skills and imagination."
I remember going over this in psych 101 and even the author of our textbook, Peter Gray 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.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
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 in to providing them a good education, with good teachers and a nice working environment..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
The thing is, the school I went to never needed one computer per pupil and I still learnt all those things.
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.
liqbase
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.
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.
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.