The massive delivery of free laptops for schoolchildren -- begun on an experimental basis nearly three years ago in Uruguay -- is booming throughout Latin America, and will have both positive and disturbing effects on future generations in the region.

On March 17, Peru signed a deal for an additional 260,000 laptops from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, a nonprofit venture that is selling laptops for $188 each. The new order will bring to 590,000 the number of laptops delivered to Peru's elementary school children under a program that provides most of the machines to one-teacher schools in poverty-stricken rural areas.

On March 18, Argentina's government delivered the first of 250,000 Intel "Classmate" laptops for students of technical high schools, only hours after the mayor of Buenos Aires, an opposition leader, announced that his city will order 190,000 laptops for elementary school children.

Last month, Brazil announced a bid to buy 1.5 million laptops for elementary school children.

Neighboring Uruguay recently became the first country in the world to give all elementary school children in public schools one Internet-connected laptop each, which is their own property and they can take home.

'IT WORKS'

"Latin America is way ahead of Asia, Africa and other regions of the world in one-to-one computer penetration in elementary schools," says Rodrigo Arboleda, the MIT program's worldwide operations chief, who added that 85 percent of the program's laptops are going to the region. "Countries have realized that it works, and they are rushing not to be left behind."

According to projections from the Inter-American Development Bank, the number of Latin American and Caribbean schoolchildren covered by these programs will soar from 1.5 million nowadays to 30 million by 2015.

"This is an unstoppable trend, whether you like it or not," Eugenio Severin, a senior IADB school laptop expert, told me.

But will the laptop avalanche impact be unequivocally positive? I asked several other experts. To my surprise, many of them criticized these programs. Among their comments:

-- First, delivering millions of laptops to schoolchildren who in some cases are malnourished will do little good. Before we give them laptops, we should give them breakfast, so that they go to school with an alert mind, they say.

-- Second, giving out laptops to millions of children without first training teachers on how to use them as tools to improve learning will be a waste of money. After the novelty is gone, schools will abandon the laptops, and Latin American countries will become the world's biggest "laptop graveyards," critics say.

-- Third, the Internet will introduce pornography, violence and wild conspiracy theories in millions of poorly educated households. Most middle-class children who enter a Nazi Internet website, for instance, have parents who can act as counterweights, and tell them that racial hatred is evil. But what will happen with children with parents who are rarely at home, or are not culturally prepared to give them guidance?

Supporters of the laptop for schoolchildren programs counter that government programs to feed children and provide them with laptops are not mutually exclusive -- you should do both. You cannot wait until all children have shoes to start building roads, they say.

Regarding teacher training, supporters say that countries are already doing that, although in many cases governments have been too quick to deliver laptops -- with an eye on the next election -- and too slow to invest in teacher training. As for pornography and off-the-wall websites, supporters say the laptops have filters, at the very least, for pornography sites.

STIMULATING

Most importantly, the laptops are stimulating children's curiosity, promoting self-learning, and forcing teachers to upgrade their skills in order to keep up with their students, supporters say.

My opinion:

Critics make reasonable points, but the laptop avalanche may be the best thing happening in Latin America nowadays.

It's a technological shock that will shake the region's outdated school systems and their almighty teachers' unions, which are a major reason why Latin America is lagging increasingly behind Asia and Eastern Europe in the global economy. If anything else, it will break the region's educational inertia, and the generalized belief that nothing can be done to bring school systems to the 21st century.

 

 

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