Last Friday Bolivian President Evo Morales, accompanied by Marcelo Claure CEO of Brightstar Corporation, announced that Bolivia would provide a laptop for every child in the country. With Bolivia’s entrance into the One Laptop Per Child Project, I’ve started to think seriously about some of the limitations of this initiative.
On the very same night, and on the very same newscast announcing the OLPC Bolivia project, two other news segments contributed to my misgivings. One segment showed video footage of schools in the rural areas of the Department of Santa Cruz. These buildings had no doors; in one instance the roof was caving in, and in another there weren’t even desks for the students to sit down at. The television station interviewed students, parents and teachers about the situation. They said local government officials had arrived in the community promising to fix the crumbling building, but then they never returned. In Bolivia, classes are set to begin early next month. It is doubtful that these problems will be fixed by that time. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Crumbling schools are the rule in rural Bolivia, and probably throughout the Third World.
The second segment showed a long line of mothers and students camping out in front of a school building, waiting to sign their students up for classes. Let me first mention, I am far from an expert on the organizational structure of Bolivia’s educational system. It was explained to me that these schools with the longest lines are semi-private. That is, the parents pay a small fee per month (between $5 and $10), so that their children can attend the school. Not all families can afford this modest sum, but for those that can, the school is somewhat protected from the socio-political upheaval that constantly afflicts the free schools. You see, the teachers at the public schools are constantly striking for higher wages, which is reasonable considering they sometimes only earn about $50 per month. But these strikes cause an interruption in classes, which can go on for weeks at a time.
Which brings me back to the OLPC project. In principle, I don’t believe anybody is against the idea that children everywhere should have access to educational technologies. But desks and doors, and roofs in tropical rainforests, should take precedence over laptop computers. And, what good is the laptop computer as an educational tool if the teachers are too busy striking for higher wages? Without looking at any official statistics, I estimate there are about 1 million school age children in the country. When we take into consideration the costs of logistics, training, and distribution on top of the costs of manufacture, we can assume that the project will cost about half a billion dollars.
I am well aware that these criticisms are far from novel, but seeing all of the news so conveniently stacked up like that, it was impossible not to notice the paradoxes. And, even though I know the machine was designed to survive in harsh conditions, and that the parts have been designed in a modular fashion, having been around kids in the campo, I sometimes wonder if they won’t find inventive ways to destroy them. Is it too rhetorical to ask: Wouldn’t the money be better spent on better schools and higher wages?