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You could afford textbooksYou could afford textbooksPosted Jul 27, 2006 16:29 UTC (Thu) by emk (guest, #1128)In reply to: India rejects One Laptop Per Child (Register) by daney Parent article: India rejects One Laptop Per Child (Register)
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.
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