A U.S. aid organization is donating laptops to school age children in Africa. Their goal is admirable: “To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.” You might be surprised to learn how some program beneficiaries are doing that though.
Apparently, schoolchildren in Nigeria have been using the laptops to explore pornographic websites. According to Reuters, a reporter from the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) found pornographic images stored on several of the children’s donated laptops. I could be wrong, but that doesn’t sound to me like the kind of exploration the program was designed to encourage.
The program is called the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. It’s supposed to be an educational program aimed at helping students in developing nations. They suggest that computers foster “learning by allowing children to ‘think about thinking,’ in ways that are otherwise impossible.” And, at just $100 per computer, the laptops are heralded as a technological breakthrough.
I’ll be the first to admit that the OLPC is a well-intentioned and creative idea. With so much work to do in such an underdeveloped corner of the world though, I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t more effective ways to encourage learning. For example, for the same amount of money, we could try donating far more of another proven educational tool: the book.
Books are more than just cost effective too. Unlike most internet websites, books are edited for accuracy. Books don’t run on batteries and needto be recharged. They don’t break and need repair. And, most importantly given the recent news story, school children can’t access sexually explicit adult materials by looking in textbooks. All things considered, books might make alot more sense.
I suppose books are too easy of an answer though. They just don’t have the same pizzazz as $100 laptops. So, OLPC program managers have instead chosen to outfit donated computers with new internet filters. We’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes these kids to explore and express their way around the new restrictions.
