Why giving poor kids laptops doesn't improve their scholastic performance | Hacker News Reader

Why giving poor kids laptops doesn't improve their scholastic performance

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22 pointsrobg24 comments

I can only talk from my own personal experience. When i was a kid my parents noticed that i was interested in computers. We couldn't afford a computer(that was 98 i think) So they sent me to computer courses once a week. I had a lot of fun. I played games, i played with paint and made cool word documents with weird fonts and colors and stuff like that. I also played a lot of duke nukem. There was a cheap internet club near my home and me and my friends went there to play. It was all really fun. We didn't learn allot, but it was fun. 2004 we could afford a decent machine and i spent my days just mesing around with XP. Exploring C:/windows/win32 exploring all the cool programs my friends gave me like winamp. It was so exiting. A year later i got internet and that was like a super charger. I learned to type really fast so i can chat and i learned to google effectively. Then i found this game Lock On: Modern Air Combat(its a flight sim). I was interested in jet plains and i started playing all day long. I used my computer only for games, or at least thats what my parents thought. The game stored allot of it's settings in configuration files and Lua scripts and xml files and you could modify those and change the gameplay drastically(the most weird thing i have seen was a flying aircraft carrier). Many of the textures were in files, so you could photoshop templates and have custom skins and i learned how to use photoshop that way, i learned how to search for other mods for the game and study them, there were allot of tools to mess around with the game and yet everybody around me thought i was wasting time. To play the game i learned allot about planes, physics and combat tactics(the game is a hardcore sim so you have to know these stuff) I started moding my hardware too. I made myself a throttle out of an old joystick and a control panel. So the moral of my story is you can give 1000 people a computer and even if only 4 people start doing great stuff with it, its better than no people. I think PG wrote in one of his essays about that. Something about stick gatherers and the difference in productivity if you give people a tool like a computer.

You've been roped into a constructivist education! In plain English, the people who make the OLPC are trying to nudge kids into doing something similar: specifically, while you just think you're playing with a cool toy, you're being encouraged to actually create things, and hence to think, and therefore to learn.

So the moral of my story is you can give 1000 people a computer and even if only 4 people start doing great stuff with it, its better than no people.

They did spend EUR 200 for each computer, so if it only helped 4 out of 1000 kids, then you're spending a _lot_ of money on them.

Even more importantly, the research shows that overall, the kids performed worse on the measures that the researchers found important. So for those four kids that do start to perform better there would other kids that performed worse. (unless you measure success along different variables that weren't taken into account in this study, but then we can't really conclude anything until a new research is done)

I think the constructivist opportunity only works on a particular kind of person with a particular kind of computer.

Alan Kay's vision is that everything should have a sort of "view source" so you can see how it was done. I had an Apple //e, back in the days when it came with a built-in BASIC interpreter and the manual, and computer mags were often filled with BASIC source listings. Which was not great, but not bad either. I assume the Romanian kids got Windows XP and there is no obvious path to hacking with that OS. You're just a consumer.

But I don't think it was the machine that mattered. Plenty of my friends had the exact same computer and all they did was trade games and play them. Given a computer, I immediately decided to write programs with it. I'm just that kind of person. When I learned to play piano, I immediately tried my hand at composing. It greatly surprised me that my musical training courses were all about learning to play rather than learning to write music.

I suspect the same is true of any hacker; for us, the point of learning anything is to synthesize.

My point is, I think Alan Kay et al. may be crafting educational programs for ideal students, who do exist, but only as tiny fractions of the population.

This is a very good point I haven't seen expressed elsewhere before. It's hard to know, but the OLPC program hopefully has a few circling social scientists who will be happy to test this hypothesis.

Although my family was very poor, I was lucky to grow up in a school district where there were a few computers here and there. I spent countless hours neglecting boring schoolwork in order to get access to any kind of computer I could and I graduated from high school with poor grades in everything except math and physics. However I taught myself basic, pascal, fortran, cobol, ibm jcl, Z80 and 6502 assembler without ever owning a computer of my own. It doesn't surprise me at all that computers had the effect of distracting kids from academic goals because that's exactly what happened to me.

I can't imagine the school teachers and administrators took into account the possibility of the computer voucher program when they designed their curriculums. However my nascent computer skills got me the jobs I needed to earn the money to be the first in my family to graduate from college.

Of course, giving kids unsupervised access to computers they don't know how to utilise is going to provide little educational value. But the article distracts from the fact that with the slightest bit of guidance, computer access can be a tremendous asset.

I remember being taught Qbasic as a kid - before then, computers were mysterious gaming devices to me. But with just a few weeks of of guidance by an interested teacher, a whole new world was opened up.

It sickens me that even now, many kids here in Sydney don't have computer access in schools until they're in their teens, and even then it's at atrocious student-to-computer ratios and with little guidance.

Part of the problem is that Luddites in the community misrepresent articles like these, thereby diminishing the public interest towards computers in education.

In initial stages there will be a slow down until they learn to use the tech.

Grades etc. may fall as there are only so many hours in a day and if you spend time away from books/study to spend it learning to use a computer by yourself or with little tutition, then you should expect to see a grade drop.

However, in a few cyles we should see the opposite occurring i.e. grades improving with the aid of tech and people with proficiency teaching each other to the benefit of all.

1) This article ONLY makes claims about scholastic performance, it makes no claims about intelligence, quality of life or the (personal and societal) benefits of a more robust technical aptitude.

2) These probably were not laptops that were brought to school and used together as a class. They were probably windows machines sitting at home.

It might be a good idea to have them do some of the final assembly; ship the computers as kits, and have someone instruct them on what each part does. That way,they are forced to learn some functional aspects of what the thing is comprised of and how it works. This might spark a deeper interest and understanding than just handing it to them would.

Reports from the field of the effects of OLPC in poor villages are extremely encouraging. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru/Arahuay http://www.technologyreview.com/video/laptop for more.

"'Vouchered' kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades, and reported lower educational aspirations than the 'unvouchered' kids."

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies.

Laptops provide them more opportunities for them (via understanind/access to tech), but being poor, I dare to say they will find more innovative uses.

I have seen first hand how being poor forces you to innovate in such countries. Hence, I agree with pg and the like that startups should be poor at the begining stages too.

Just try to get the right change whenever the cash register is down.

That's what happens when you have technology replace fundamentals too soon.

Honestly, this is what happens when rich people try to decide what's best for poor children. Problem is they just don't get it. They're stuck at Maslow's Level 6 when the rest of the world is still stuggling at Levels 1 and 2. How can someone who has never missed a meal (or a tennis lesson) understand what those born without really need?

These children need 3 healthy meals per day. (Even one or two would do.) They need sunshine, fresh air, and clean water. They need good teachers and doctors. They need books and medical supplies and a world where they don't have to work full time before they reach puberty. They need a mother who won't beat them and a father who won't rape them. Computers? They don't even make the Top 25.

These are just "feel good" programs for people who have never wanted for anything. If they really wanted to help, let them pitch in and solve the real problems of the world. Hopefully, that won't interrupt their tee times.

They need sunshine, fresh air, and clean water. They need good teachers and doctors. They need books and medical supplies and a world where they don't have to work full time before they reach puberty

You seem to be dealing with received wisdom here. From what I've seen, the children targeted by the program have not been in situations reflective of life-threatening destitution, nor is the correlation between poverty and rapist-fathers particularily strong.

The vast bulk of charity goes to exactly the sort of things you mention, with Gates and Buffet being the obvious current examples. This kind of charity has generally failed as just giving people food (etc) is a temporary fix of a long-term problem. And so OLPC is trying to improve kids' future productivity. It's a reasonable goal, even if it will probably fail.

Yeah, i agree. Bulgaria isn't as bad as it used to be when i was a kid in the nineties and early 2000-s. I mean we have two new playgrounds where kids can play football near my school, almost everybody can afford a mobile phone and the people living in extreme poverty are allot less than what i remember it the nineties(im born 1990). We need better education. Bulgaria had very good education, but it's declining. The teachers have miserable salaries, the students are not motivated. Basically we need some cool after class activities, because now most of the kids are just getting stoned, because of the boredom. In my home town there used to be a free government funded air modeling club. Kids just learned and had a hobby for after school. Now its private and its too expensive for me. There were allot of stuff like that that either disappeared or got really expensive because of privatization. And the only alternatives are sport and drugs. I see improvements in the sport part. There are allot of programs and stuff, but it's not enough and its not only sport thats important. In school computer education is broken. BROKEN. We all just surf the net or chat or in my case show off my cool little scripts that i made home. So we don't need better anti mafia and anti drugs squads, we need better teachers and more after school activities that are free(or relatively cheap). Of course thats only for the region. In Africa they need doctors and teachers and farm equipment and stuff.

This argument about the hierarchy of needs is tired. Every time I see it posted it is almost always met with convincing rebuttals, and I'm surprised it got modded up on HN.

For all the OLPC's faults, it would not be better to for MIT's media lab to organize a way to give away food or medicine, nor would it have been better for the governments buying the computers to buy this food or medicine instead of the laptops. Both because this is what MIT's media lab and nerds are GOOD AT, and because you can't simply solve a countries nutritional or health problems for them; it's not sustainable and often makes things worse.

Another point: the countries that are spending their educational budget on these are not full of staving kids and poor teachers. They are not recovering from tsunamis or civil wars. The idea is that they can save money on the books they would have (or should have) bought instead. You can argue this point, I don't actually know the specifics in each country, but at least start here instead of with the "oh lets buy them food instead" angle.

The idea is that the laptops should allows the children to learn abilities which will raise the production of the country in the long run, which is the only sustainable way to lift people out of poverty. You started to argue this point with your cash register comment, but I don't think it was very effective. ( A. it implies we should ban calculators from school B. what everyday tasks are these laptops doing for the kids that the kids will never fully learn now?)

Lastly, I reject the 'feel good' comment. First of all, solving the "real problems of the world" (whatever that means) is just as much of a 'feel good' program as OLPC. That's that charity is, get over it. This just happens to be how a subset of people think they can help. If you disagree, find some convincing arguments against it. Like I implied earlier, there are plenty.

What they need is simple -- opportunity.

Equal opportunity.

Respect for basic human dignity.

The real problem is not what children need, but what societies need. Tragically, these two are are in opposition. If you give Africans (for example) their Levels 1 and 2, in 20 years you'll have a tripled population that's just as destitute and dysfunctional as before, if not more.

It's the food and medicine programs that are "feel good". Without reducing African birthrates (which are the highest in the world), they probably only make things worse in the long run.

Urbanization is reducing birth rates. Fast.

There is actually a consistent inverse correlation between development level and fertility rate. Economically affluent countries have lower fertility.

This suggests that improving the standard of living is the most, perhaps the only, humane way of dealing with the population problem. Other measures, even measures like China's "One Child Policy", tend to have unanticipated repercussions. (Example: everybody in China wants a boy, to such a degree that some families end up abandoning newborn girls out on a street somewhere, if not resorting to downright infanticide.)

So the argument that raising Africa's standard of living will worsen the population explosion doesn't really hold water; the exact opposite argument can also be made.

Food and medicine programs are making the standard of living higher in the short term and lower in the long term. That was exactly my point: if you want to feel good, then short term is important. If you want to solve real problems, like unsustainable birthrates, then long term is important. We don't actually disagree.

If we had enough money to bootstrap the whole (or part) of Africa into a decent way of life, it would be one thing. But we don't. And half-measures are worse than nothing. If you don't have enough strength to lift an injured person over a fence, picking him up and dropping him back down won't do any good. But, it'll look like you're trying if you squint hard enough.

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