Saving the children in India
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Wika at Hirap > Media WatchAlthough some of the ministry’s arguments against OLPC is debatable, I can only agree entirely with the statement that the scheme is being propagated in a conceptual vacuum as key argument that can underlie the rest. It is good that India opened the debate on (in this case) OLPC, as more debates and discussions on the part of national organization should be taken up on all issues of development and technologies.
India: HRD ministry rejects OLPC idea of MIT Media Lab /04 July 2006
The Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry of India has strongly disapproved the idea of ‘one-laptop-per-child’ (OLPC) being aggressively marketed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Laboratory. HRD contends that spending Rs 450 crore on digital empowerment can be better spent on primary and secondary education.
The ministry stated that India must not allow the idea to be implemented for the experimentation with children. Negroponte had made a presentation on OLPC at Yojna Bhavan on April 7 seeking to sell one million laptops at the rate of $100 per unit for children, the cost to be borne by the government. The ministry said that it is quite obvious that the financial expenditure to be made on the scheme will be out of public funds. Then, It would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents. The ministry said that 6 to 12 is a highly vulnerable age group to cover in an area of human technology interface, which is so new and heavily debated. The ministry said that health problems of Indian rural children are well-known; personalised intensity of computer use could easily exacerbate some problems related to eyesight and the back. HRD ministry also thinks that there is a ‘conceptual vacuum in which the scheme is being propagated’.
Source: The Times of India
HRD Ministry rejects plan panel`s idea of laptop per child
New Delhi, July 24: Rejecting the planning commission’s idea of implementing ‘one laptop per child (OLPC) scheme’ as “paedagogically suspect”, the HRD Ministry feels it would be appropriate to instead utilise the money for universalization of secondary education.
“The case for giving a computer to every single is paedagogically suspect. It may actually be detrimental to the growth of creative and analytical abilities of the child”, Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee told the Planning Commission in a letter sent last month.
“…..We cannot visualize a situation for decades when we can go beyond the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools,” Banerjee said.
Citing notes received from a few experts in this regard, he said “our considered view, therefore, is that there is no case for further engaging with this idea within this ministry.”
“…If the Planning Commission has the kind of money that would be required for this scheme, it would be appropriate to utilize it for ‘universalisation of secondary education’ for which, a concept paper has been lying with the Planning Commission for approval since November 2005,” he said.
The OLPC was a non-profit association dedicated to research to develop a 100-dollar laptop to educate children. Faculty members at the MIT media Lab launched this initiative. It was first announced by lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte, now chairman of OLPC.
Banerjee said that based on feedback from N K Sinha, a Joint Secretary in the ministry who had been deputed to attend the presentation at the MIT, “we do not think that the idea of Prof Negroponte is mature enough to be taken seriously at this stage and no major country is presently following this. Even inside America, there is no much enthusiasm about this”.
Bureau Report
