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]

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.