Priorities or laziness?

Over at the blog an interesting discussion has broken out about how much of a priority OLPC should be. I’m not going to reproduce the discussion; I suggest you read it.

I just want to say that, in general, the negative, drag-everyone-down attitudes in our country come from the fact that we don’t believe in ourselves. Examples get mentioned, like the biology labs gathering dust.

The argument is that there are other priorities ahead of buying OLPC laptops, so it’s better to watch this project from the sidelines and not spend a peso on it, because first we have to feed the children before handing them a laptop.

It’s also said that we don’t have trained people. The teachers get the blame, but I think the problem is that things are often done halfway. A chemistry lab gets built, but there’s no budget to restock the chemical reagents. Or a biology lab gets opened, but dissecting animals is banned because it’s considered cruel. A lab needs supplies; pretty pipettes and sophisticated microscopes aren’t enough.

Are teachers trained to use these things? I think they are. The question to ask is whether there are any incentives for the trained teacher.

Implementing OLPC requires teachers to get trained, because they need to know and master this new tool, which was designed specifically for classroom activities (in fact the network works when there are more than 2 units nearby).

That’s probably why our authorities are reluctant to take on this challenge: you have to train the teachers too, you have to work OLPC into the curriculum, teachers have to be evaluated, there are logistical problems, and so on and so on.

Too much work, better to do nothing, the kids are just fine the way they are.

Since we can’t even take care of our environment for our children, we’re hardly going to worry about them learning to live in the information society.

All out of laziness, dressed up in phrases like “we will evaluate the project”, “we are studying the real impact of these technologies in other countries”, “we have offered to run a pilot”, etc.