Loading ...Do Starving Children Really Need a $100 Laptop?
By now I’m sure that you’ve heard about the $100 dollar laptop program which is designed to get a new laptop computer into the hands of needy children living in poor nations. Ask yourself this question: Wouldn’t it be more beneficial just to give the needy children the $100 dollars to buy food for their families?
With $100 dollars these people could buy enough food to feed their families for a month. Better yet, why not give them the $100 dollars for food and teach them how to provide for themselves. It just makes more sense.
If the laptops are able to be produced at the $100 price point they will be shipped to places such as Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand and Libya. It doesn’t seem to make sense to provide computers to children that have humanitarian needs that need to be provided for first and foremost.
Kids that don’t have enough food to eat or adequate shelter don’t need a laptop. The One Laptop Per Child program that I am writing about is backed by Nicholas Negroponte and MIT’s Media Lab. It’s very nice that they are making this kind gesture to help needy children however, until all of these children don’t have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, all of this time and money could be and should be spent on immediately providing food, shelter and practical education for these children and their families. They don’t need a laptop. (c) 2006 ElectroGeek.com
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The implication seems to be that all children living in poverty are without food or basic necessities, or that all poor third-world countries have famines. This is an extremely simplistic (and wrong) assumption to make.
The problem is that these children, these families, do have basic amenities, but it’s very hard to provide what we would consider “a good education” when there are up to a hundred children in a classm, or no classroom to hold lessons in. OLPC aims to decentralize this kind of learning and provide the opportunity for more advanced and developed education, in less developed areas. As you yourself say, “teach them how to provide for themselves”. What else do you think education is for?
Not sure I can buy into that, Beowulf. You’d have us believe that a teacher (in *any* country) will have an easier time or be a more effective educator when working with 100 kids clicking on Google links than he/she could be in dealing with that same group of kids with books & pencils?
I don’t have first-hand experience with this, but I wonder if maybe there’s a difference between information and knowledge… Without interaction with a teacher, is technology a gateway to better education at all?
I think the idea is more to facilitate learning, not just in the schoolroom where teacher-time is at a premium, but also in the community, at home, and with friends/classmates through networking.
A lot of learning is done through homework and through exploration outside the classroom. In situations where textbooks are scarce the laptops can provide access to similar resources (although the OLPC project also plans to provide textbooks as well).
Certainly attitudes and old habits will have to evolve in many places if the project is to be a success, no doubt some will do better than others. I suspect there will also be knock-on effects in many communities by having access to computers where there was no (or restricted) access before.
The OLPCwiki has a short FAQ on the subject here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_mission#Isn.27t_this_project_just_a_techno-Utopian_dream.3F_A_band_aid_when_more_serious_surgery_needs_to_be_done.3F
Beowulf, Are you telling me that you can verify that all the kids on the list to receive laptops are well fed, have adequate shelter and are educated to the point that they know how to provide for themselves? We are talking about children in countries such as Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand and Libya. I fail to believe that this effort and money could not be better utilized. As I stated before the laptops are a nice gesture, however with so many needy children in the world, don’t you think that money could be better spent?
Electrogeek, Beowulf doesn’t have to check anything, the people who will distribute the pc will.
What he is saying is that there are plenty of poor, non-starving kids in those countries. And this project aims at them.
I am from Argentina, so I can speak for Argentina and Brazil (that is in a similar situation). Maybe you should do some research, there is extreme poverty in places like Tucuman but there is a huge percentage of the poor kids who are not starving and could need the help.
Finally, I don’t get why people bashes this project. It is not the same to use the 100us$ to something else, because they are not giving the kids 100us$, they are giving them a laptop!!!! do you think you can buy a laptop in Argentina with 100 us$?
Take this as an experiment if you like. I think saving one kid from poverty is worth risking 100us$. I really don’t have any problem with my government spending 50,000,000us$ of taxes giving half million kids a chance.
Dunno that I trust that these notebooks will only go to children with running water and sufficient nutrition. But if nothing else, it’ll open up a tremendous new market for tech support…
Sure, I’ve read that these OLPC units have been stress-tested, but by adults in a clean lab environment - have you seen what a little kid can do with a plastic toy? Snap!