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Obama Announces e-Book Scheme For Low-Income Communities
An anonymous reader writes: The White House has today launched an initiative encouraging top book publishers to supply $250 million worth of free e-books to low-income students. Partnering with local governments and schools nationwide, President Obama hopes that the e-book scheme will support low-income households who significantly trail the national average for computer ownership and digital connectivity. At Anacostia Library in Southeast Washington, D.C., Obama announced that libraries and schools in poorer communities would be supported by the scheme and efforts would be made to increase internet access at these establishments. Publishers involved in the program include Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. NGOs, such as book donation charity Firstbook, and public libraries will also be working together to develop apps to support the digital reading program.
Libraries already do this. How about supporting the vanishing middle class?
This. Does anyone think this is going to help them in any way?
The way the US treats its poor reminds me a lot of the colonialism of earlier times. Patronizing, without any real care or concern and so far detached from the real problems that one has to wonder whether they are just stupid or whether their motives ain't what they claim to be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My mom regularly borrows ebooks from the library in regional Australia. The system used is called Bolinda Borrow Box. Sounds like it works pretty well. Only epub is supported though, no no kindles.
Meanwhile, here in Manila Hernando Guanlao, 60-something, converted his whole house into a library (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19547365), to honor his mother and father after they died. He said: "As a book care-taker, you become a full man.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
So exactly what use are low-priced e-books to people who don't own computers?
The way the US treats its poor reminds me a lot of the colonialism of earlier times. Patronizing, without any real care or concern and so far detached from the real problems that one has to wonder whether they are just stupid or whether their motives ain't what they claim to be.
The motives are clear. Getting votes. They make promises, ask for votes, and blame others. Keep reminding the poor its no fault of theirs and they should sit and wait until someone comes in and saves them. And in our all our 'political correctness' nobody is willing to talk about the primary elements of the problem, which are kids being brought up in broken homes or no home at all with no family or community support structure. All the schools, teachers, & Ipads in the world won't do anything to help most of them. But hey, as long they'll vote for you, tell them what they want to hear. As long as you look like you are doing something, you'll get the votes.
Unfortunately, the vicious cycle can only be broken by taking kids out of the environment, or limiting the number of kids in it. But if you propose solutions that try to do either, you will be branded as hateful, intolerant, racist, or whatever other slanderous accusation that can be thrown because your messing with guaranteed votes.
Unfortunately, the poor are forced into substandard schools........
The per pupil funding in Baltimore is one of the highest in the United States.
http://articles.baltimoresun.c...
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Obama is giving $250 million to big publishers and some software developers so that they can deliver out-of-copyright books that "the poor" could have downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg and Google already. All Hail our Crony Capitalist in Chief.
Now how exactly did they calculate how much the "free" ebooks were worth? (Smell the oxymoron in that?) Is this some sort of MPAA/RIAA accounting scheme where the price of an ebook is quantified by the price of a physical copy (DVD/CD)? And why focus on the so-called reputable publishers? Can't the government just hire the authors directly and have them put out Creative Commons licensed textbooks (BTW this has already been done by some independent groups)? This is like hiring the mafia to build your house.
I suspect availability of good things to read isn't really the big problem here. You know, because, libraries.
And let's not forget Project Gutenberg, over 46,000 free ebooks.
So how about some copyright reform! Fuck, give the $250m directly to the MPAA/RIAA. Do something about the ludicrous copyright period. Imagine how many more great books would enter the public domain?!
Kinda pay full price for the e-books you borrow.
Which kinda suck since when I borrow books in general I never read shit from them.
I can't understand how that's supported / accepted.
I wonder what this cost in the US.
Why doesn't the federal or local government simply commission the books it requires for its educational curriculum? Then give them away for free from a website. It shouldn't be necessary to go cap in hand to publishers begging for a few freebies when the publishers shouldn't be in such a strong position to start with.
The real problem is the lack of social mobility. Poor people are lumped together in poor areas, have poorly funded and staffed schools where you may learn little more than what is necessary to serve your masters. Yes, every blue moon someone manages to claw his way out of it on his own... only to face the backlash of the whole "affirmative action" bullshit. Because after a wave of poorly trained people (due to poor education from understaffed, underfunded schools), everyone from the demographic will be seen as the "quota $disadvantaged_group" and treated accordingly. And self fulfilling prophecies are damn hard to beat.
People see what happens around them. They see how Mike from next door who has always been a really bright kid did some studying outside of school because he couldn't learn a thing in the overfilled classes and he wanted to "get big" and out of the ghetto, They see how he studied late at night and made projects in his spare time, how he took every stinkin' job to get through college somehow because his parents just could not support him at all, and how he now has some cheesy nondescript title that means jack and reports to Ron who has always been sharp as a sponge and twice as smart whose only redeeming feature and whose only justification to the job is that his parents were rich enough to buy him a degree from some more reputable college. The only thing Ron is really great at is taking credit for Mike's work, and since he's his subordinate nobody questions it. And of course Mike's chance to actually climb the ladder is nil because Ron of course knows that his position is dependent on keeping Mike, and keeping him down.
This in turn means that nobody wants to dream the American pipedream anymore. The whole "work hard, climb the ladder and you can be rich" bullshit, nobody believes it anymore! Yes, that did work a long while ago. It hasn't worked for quite a while now. The new American dream is winning the lottery. Or suing some rich guy who runs you over.
Solving this is a lot harder, of course. With the current system, a solution is near impossible. Europe's social structure is a lot more permeable due to a bigger role of public schools (that are pretty well funded, too). Admission to universities is tied to your academic success and progress rather than your parents' wallet, and tuition fees are very affordable (running in the three digits per semester, usually). That would maybe be a first step.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.