"Chile, a curious and shy country" ( :D )

The future has many names.
For the weak it is the unattainable.
For the fearful, the unknown.
For the brave it is opportunity.
– Victor Hugo (via Kimniekan)

I wanted to write something about the way our authorities react to the opinion of Nicholas Negroponte, who said that ours is a curious and shy country.

Says Didier de Saint Pierre, director of the Enlaces project, the Education Ministry’s school technology program:

“The aim of running pilot projects with one computer per student is to measure what happened to the students who were exposed to this technology versus students in equivalent conditions who had no access, to see whether there were improvements in learning, before we rush into a mass rollout”.

That is justifying the passive attitude our government has kept up on this whole subject. The director of Enlaces suffers from the syndrome of all our agency heads and authorities: sit as quietly as possible until the presidential term is over, hopefully without scandals or complications, that is, without doing anything.

I would understand that attitude, but it worries me that things like this get said:

“…countries like Uruguay, which brought in Negroponte’s computers, may be surprised to find that their students didn’t learn more, but got more distracted, browsing and chatting during class time. Education is in no position to speculate at that level without hard evidence”.

I would expect the director of Enlaces to know something about the CEIBAL project. I hope he does, and that he reconsiders “the nonsense” he goes around saying…

For my part, I think Negroponte got it wrong. Chile is not a shy and curious country. What we have are fearful authorities who are, for that very reason, arrogant.