India rejects One Laptop Per Child (Register)

Posted Jul 26, 2006 21:32 UTC (Wed) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]

"I went through high school taking physics, chemistry, calculus, etc. without ever needing to use a computer even once."

The OLPC project is geared for kids who (a) are at basic levels of learning; i.e., the Three R's; and (b) don't have access to school and/or public libraries, like we did... or PBS broadcasts of "Sesame Street" on the TV at home.

And yes, armed with a 1950s/60s public-school education, I, too, took (and passed) those same classes, using paper, pencil, and slide-rule. I think the point of OLPC, and perhaps its most important element, is "leveling the playing field." Rural India, and the rest of the 3rd/4th-world countries, are still playing "catch-up". I believe that OLPC will help them do so, all the more quickly.

YMMV.

Posted Jul 27, 2006 16:29 UTC (Thu) by emk (guest, #1128) [Link]

On the other hand, you actually had access to books.

Look at the other posts in this thread: These laptops are intended as textbook replacements, and cost the same as roughly 3 years worth of textbooks.

I don't think that the experiences of a well-funded American school district in the mid-20th-century are especially relevant to villages with no libraries, electric power or (often) reliably clean water. (On the other hand, Indian villages contain a suprisingly large number of cellphones, because they require less infrastructure, and can be manufactured for ~US$10 each.)

Third-world education is a different problem, and requires a different toolset. Now, OLPC might not be the best answer. But if they can promise an average lifetime of 4 years, this would lower the cost of education, and greatly increase the library size available to each student.

So OLPC deserves more than a brush off. Even in the third world, fancy modern electronics can actually be cheaper than building lots of low-tech infrastructure.

Posted Jul 26, 2006 22:08 UTC (Wed) by daney (subscriber, #24551) [Link]

In a developing country, you could probably get one teacher/classroom for a year for $100. You could teach say 20 children there.

Ok so that is probably an under-estimate, but within an order of magnitude probably close.

Posted Jul 27, 2006 0:04 UTC (Thu) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]

You forgot the "per child" bit of the question, which puts a completely different spin on it.

Posted Jul 27, 2006 10:23 UTC (Thu) by botsie (guest, #1485) [Link]

> How many classrooms and teachers can you get for ~ $100?

In India? You'd probably get a teacher for a month. Multiply that by, say, 30 students in a class and soon you have a serious bit of pocket change there.

-- b

Posted Jul 27, 2006 2:44 UTC (Thu) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

Giving a laptop to every child is a crazy idea, it does nothing other than fatten the pockets of private companies...

<cynic> I think you forgot an important part to that sentence:
"...at the expense of governments!"

This gives me repsect for India. As for Nigeria... I think the biggest exposure most of us have to that government is the constant spam scams, and now this. ;) They obviously don't have issues taking handouts, we'll see how many of these end up on Nigerian bureaucrats' desks, when questioned about it you can expect the same answer as when questioned about the 409 scams! </cynic>

I know that that response was worthy of slashdot, but I am getting a little tired of all the coverage given to this project which is obviously of a highly political nature. And when I say political, it is not like RMS's politics which are directly relevant to free software. This has to do with giant subsidies and socialism, not free software. OK, I admit the technical articles about OLPC were very interesting... Maybe I'm just a little grumpy tonight. I can't help but wonder how many others are getting tired of this vaporware spotlight (just because it will supposedly run free software does not make it vaporware!)

Posted Jul 27, 2006 3:21 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Of course good teachers come first, and good teacher education. As long
as education has to be cheap, then no good education is affordable.

The budget of the average village school doesn't extend to this kind of
technology -- yet. But if the Rs5000 price tag -- once per student or
teacher, for her whole school career -- isn't affordable, then that
student's education as a whole is already seriously underfunded.
Education budgets *will* increase, if only because of India's rapid
growth.

But with textbooks retailing at Rs1500 per year per student, the OLPC
*already* looks like an attractive alternative. It brings the price of a
child's laptop down by an order of magnitude. It will be as affordable
to many Indian schools (ok, not the ones that pay a teacher Rs1000/month
to teach 50 kids, but *many* schools) in 2008 as Apple laptops were to
Maine schools in 2000. If it was a good idea for them, why isn't it a
good idea for India?

> What is essentially needed is teacher, a blackboard,
> chalk pieces and good books.

The laptop is supposed to supplant the textbooks, not the rest of the
recipe. It is expected to have a working life of many years and its
(wholesale) cost is not more than the (retail) price of four years' worth
of mandatory primary school textbooks for one public school pupil.

For all I know the school's retail markup on the textbook price goes
towards the teacher's wage; so let's generously allow that the real cost
to the school of the textbooks is half the price the pupil pays. But
doesn't the Indian publisher of those books make a hefty profit on even
that wholesale price?

You're right that the money will be going to a manufacturer in Taiwan and
not to Indian publishers -- but the profit margin on OLPC hardware is
so low that it is rather disingenuous of you to say that it does 'nothing
other than fatten the pockets of private companies'. What it does do is
drive technology innovation -- the companies are in it for the spin-offs
much more than for direct profit -- and it has the potential to foster
development of unprecedented information networks amongst populations who
have never had them before.

Skepticism is healthy, but providing teachers and children with personal,
portable networked computers might not be quite as 'pedagogically
suspect' as you may think:

http://www.mcmel.org/MLLS/