$100 Laptop! Is it worth what it seems to be? - Panorama

I don’t believe that educational needs comes before the basic needs like food, shelter and clothes.
Rómulo Trindade Tomé Marques Alves | Nov 29th, 2007
I obviously agree with this sentence. Nevertheless, I think you are analysing the situation by a very dark side that can be associated, in Political Economics, to the structuralism theory born from the thoughts of Karl Marx. Although this theory is rather interesting, especially to measure the inequalities in International Commerce, it limits itself to see only the extremely economic side of the social conjuncture in a slightly extremist way. So, I suppose that a bit of aware would be very positive. In fact, in order to define a policie it is necessary to see not only the political-economic side but also the history, both from the past and nowadays´ history - comparing with other nations. Lets think about India (so near Bangladesh), for example. In 1947 (independence), a petrifying number of Indians couldn’t satisfy their basic needs. It still has a lot of problems. However, since 1947 it is incredible how India managed to achieve its actual conjuncture. So, how did India managed to become such a better place to live? The answer is very simple. The development of India is mainly concerned with education. In 1951 (5 years after independence) are made 7 Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), which exams (to become a student there) are much more difficult than in MIT or Harvard (and there are not bribes). After 1953, Indian professionals began to emigrate to EUA. Until 1991, India’s economic system was far from ideal - socialist pro-soviet. In that year, the prime-minister Manmohan Singh opened the economy to foreign investments. Then, the competition in the national telecommunications industry started, and the prices become lower. Then optical fibre became almost free to India because of reasons widely known – some luck I admit. After this moment, it wasn’t necessary to emigrate to work. In fact, a lot of Indians in the EUA returned to India because they were fired. And why did this happen? Well, because it was cheaper to do the work in India. It is here that outsourcing has its role. “Outsourcing refers to the delegation of non-core operations from internal production to an external entity specializing in the management of that operation. Outsourcing is utilizing experts from outside the entity to perform specific tasks that the entity once performed itself. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of labour, capital, technology and resources.” [in wikipedia]. Analysing India’s development process I think if it was not by education, this country would still be as it was in 1947 – a country where basic needs are not minimally satisfied to a huge part of its population. The rest of your text is very pertinent. But if you analyse it carefully, even in the Nepal’s schools the solution would pass by educational policies. In my opinion, other problem is that people in underdeveloped and in development countries don’t know how to use computers and there is not anybody to explain them. It is similar to the situation that occurs with these countries with the methods of controlling natality. Actually, if there is not anybody who explains them the importance of controlling the birth rate, the dangerous of AIDS and how to prevent themselves, they won´t change! In fact, most people there don´t know how to use a condom or a pill. And men consider that using these things makes them “less man”. A mentality change urges! And the only way to do that is by education and international cooperation. I am looking forward to see the result of EU-Africa summit. One-child policies as China´s are unwelcome. By this way, the Millennium Development Goals will never be achieved by 2015! “But help them by providing pencils, notebooks and textbooks which are far cheaper than $100 laptop. It’s the responsibility and duty of the technocrat like Negroponte to think about the use of technology in education but it’s also their duty to make the technology affordable, accessible and efficient for general use.” Pencils, notebooks and textbooks? That is not crucial. “Don’t give the fish; teach how to fish”. This means that the essential is not giving that material, but teach them how to teach and what to teach. In fact, only by this way the poor students in the underdeveloped countries can succeed. Why giving those things if they are not used in the best way possible? What Bangladesh needs is a strong human capital that allows the country to export brains. Only by this way they can have profits and develop more rapidly as India did. When teachers in Bangladesh (and other underdeveloped countries by addition) know how to teach and what to teach regarding to what is being done in the developed countries, the country will grow. Then, the emigrated brains will return and help the country. But if technology (computers mainly) isn’t included in these programmes of education/teaching, what are the brains going to do in foreign countries? The obvious answer is nothing! Maybe the same as many qualified Romanians, Moldovans and Ukrainians do in Eastern Europe: they, who are medics and teachers, clean houses and build (physically, not in the architect’s way) flats to survive. Although these people have good qualifications, they don’t know how to work with modern technology and their qualifications are not recognized. So it is important to centralize the education globally. They also need computers and they need someone who teaches them how to work with computers. Do you know how the Indian university students get money? They study hard during the day and work at night. And the truth is that this work depends a lot of the technology knowledge. More, when the millennium bug occurred – occurrence that was very important to India – if wasn’t because of the Indians technologic knowledge (and also because they are many people) they wouldn’t be the ones to have the main role. I agree with this measure. Nonetheless, I’m afraid that the computers get there and are not used conveniently because there are not anybody to teach how to work with this machines. In my opinion, these are the real problems concerned with OLPC.

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