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Comment by nebula | Hacker News Reader

A must read for anybody interested in education and development related matters in third world countries in general and in India in particular: http://www.deeshaa.org/2007/02/07/thoughts-on-the-education-...

The gist of the matter is that OLPC is a bad thing for India at large. Why? because India doesn't have the resources. There are thousands of schools without a blackboard and a chalk mainly due to lack of resources and corruption in the Govt. And in general teaching can be done without computers. Now if a country that can't afford blackboards and toilets goes shopping for computers, it comes at a cost: more schools that would be without teachers or any other basic amenities.

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Computer education is compulsory as part of curriculum in high schools here in Kerala(south Indian state).Every state controlled schools, no matter how remote, does have computers and trained teachers.

The government has so many programs (akshaya.net) in place to make sure that everyone(not just students) get access to good education. Education is one thing the Kerala government has done right. Having said that , i dont really know the situation in other parts of India.The point is , its not as bad as you think.

> Having said that, I don't really know the situation in other parts of India. The point is, it's not as bad as you think.

Kerala has the highest Human Development Index rate in India. It is highly unrepresentative of the country as a whole.

Every country has urban and rural areas. So maybe nebula has seen only the slums :P and not seen places like Bangalore or Pune or elsewhere.

Anyway, OLPC-India targets govt schools. And if given to the state of Kerala, I would fully support it. Kerala is the state with the highest literacy rate (sometime back I heard it's 98%. so their state govt seem to be efficient in the area of education). There are govts that are corrupt. And I guess some of those OLPCs will go to corrupt bureaucrat's kids. But still a part of it would reach those for whom it was bought - the govt school kids. Many schools don't have blackboards? The situation won't get worse anyway. Think of it as money being used for a purpose rather than going to another bureaucrat's pocket in lump some.

P.S: Even if one of those who got an OLPC, gets bitten by the geek-bug / entrepreneur-bug. Turns out to do something for his locality/surrounding sometime later. I would say the OLPC has done it's job :)

[full disclosure: I'm from Bangalore]

"a country that can't afford blackboards and toilets goes shopping for computers"

Can they really not afford it, or are there other factors at play?

India has nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and a space programme. It is not the poor, undeveloped country some in the West imagine it to be.

While I don't mean to hurt Indian sentiments, possession of nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers is hardly an indicator of the state of development of any country.

Any reasonably sized economy can own them even if half the population is starving. That is the power of aggregation. What matters is per capita income. Can India really afford to buy a laptop for all its children? $100s is almost three months salary for a primary school teacher in many parts of India. And there are hordes of qualified people willing to work at those wages, if the government gives them the job. Yet there are so many vacant posts, and if what I hear is right there are so many schools without any teachers at all. Why is it?

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