6 ms·

Personal background: my wife works in development and has organized education projects in Ethiopia. The development community know all about this and are scathi

• readme 14y ago
  Who needs native culture when you've got nyancat
• no_more_death 14y ago
  True, this is something of an experiment and may not be the optimal way to educate. At least, not yet. But Xoom tablets are $200 today and the price for tablets continues to fall. In a year or so, there will be e-readers on the market for $20 and many decent tablets will be available for $60 and less. The market is glutted with last-generation tablets and phablets. Something of this nature could provide a second life for these tablets. Xooms in particular are extremely durable and could service children for years. I would also keep in mind that the development community is probably biased toward hiring new teachers. Again, this just sounds like an experiment.
  • vidarh 14y ago
    > In a year or so, there will be e-readers on the market for $20 and many decent tablets will be available for $60 and less. In volume (lots of 100,500,1000) this is already the case. You can find sellers dumping lots of 1000 of "outdated" tablets (mostly Android 2.2) for $5-$10 a piece. For smaller lots of more current generation: A Freescale IMX6Q quad core based 10.1" tablet with Android Jelly Bean (4.1), 1024x600 capacitive screen, 1GB RAM, 8GB flash: $32.50 a piece in lots of 200.... Current generation reasonable spec'ed 7" tablets ordered from China in lots of 1 start around $40-$50, with free shipping to large parts of the world...
• MichaelGG 14y ago
  Why would you want to teach kids a local language instead of a more widely-used and applicable language? Forcing groups to stick to their own language sounds like a more useful tool to oppress them than giving them equal language footing. And for the country overall, unifying everyone to one common language is a massive benefit. What am I missing? Why teach them skills in a lesser-used language? (Personal experience from having lived in Guatemala, where there's pressure from outside groups to "keep the culture" and teach kids in their regional languages. As some of the parents of those kids noted, this only sets things against them: Having perfect Spanish offers them much more opportunity.)
  • AJ007 14y ago
    Local languages make it easier for a regional government/power to control a group of people. More importantly, it dramatically reduces the amount of consumable information available to someone. Instead of being able to learn from tens of millions of books and billions of web documents, now you are able to learn from, if you are lucky, hundreds of books and thousands of web documents.
  • DrStalker 14y ago
    I was wondeirng this too. I have no idea if the OLPC project overall is a good use of funds compared to alternatives (I suspect not, but have zero evidence and no relevent background to state this with authority), but the idea of a literate population witha common language seems like a great idea for a lot of reasons, starting with a literate population that can communicate with their neighbors instead of keeping them as an enemy because they can't communiate to find any common ground. I've never understood the big deal when a language gradually dies out - insisting on keeping it around is insisting on keeping a group of people stuck in an older culture that doesn't work if they want to interact with others in the modern world.
    • ScottBurson 14y ago
      I'd wager there are often some valuable things lost when a language dies -- myths, sayings, observations on life and human nature -- that if written down and translated, could benefit all of us. (And yes, I know translation isn't always easy.) I don't entirely disagree with you either. There is a lot to be said for joining the modern world. But I'd like to see people recording what they can of their traditional culture as they do it.
• backprojection 14y ago
  So Meles was Tigray, and the new guy is from Wolayita, not Amhara. Why would these guys want to stamp out local cultures and replace them with the Amharic language? I think rule #1 with regard to Ethiopia is that non-Ethiopians don't know what they're talking about, no matter how well-intentioned they are.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• Jach 14y ago
  > these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally - by orders of magnitude. What are the actual prices over a multi-year period? Something that's a penny is a few orders of magnitude less expensive than something that's $10, though that doesn't mean you can't scale with the second thing. > the tablets educate in English or Amharic ... trying to exterminate local languages and culture Good, many cultures are despicable and the ones that aren't shouldn't worry. Also English (and other languages widely in use) is the language of the rich and powerful, consciously refusing to teach it to kids in poor countries is a great way to keep them poor. Not even teaching the official language of the land is a great way to keep them ignorant on official matters.
  • Steko 14y ago
    Newsflash: teaching kids to read is actually much much easier if it's done in the language the kid speaks. "Good, many cultures are despicable and the ones that aren't shouldn't worry" What is this I don't even...
    • jlgreco 14y ago
      > Newsflash: teaching kids to read is actually much much easier if it's done in the language the kid speaks. They did not de-fund traditional education to bring in this form of education. If you want to do something to teach these kids their native language's written form, knock yourself out. In the meantime, this is a hell of a lot better than nothing. Neither are they taking these children away from their family or village. They are introducing a supplemental window into the world. Any knowledge of culture these children could have acquired through verbal communication with their parents will still be transferred. If elements of a culture are willingly abandoned by people when they are exposed to additional sources of culture, those abandoned fragments of culture are not to be mourned. Were they forbidding local education and preventing the spread of knowledge, then there would be an issue, but that is most certainly not what is going on.
      • Steko 14y ago
        People seem to be hell bend on using whatever straw man is available to defend this effort from any criticism. "They did not de-fund traditional education to bring in this form of education." No one said they did. "If you want to do something to teach these kids their native language's written form, knock yourself out. " Ad homenim attacks are not a legitimate defense to honest criticism of a policy's inadequacies. "In the meantime, this is a hell of a lot better than nothing." Who said it wasn't better than nothing? I'm saying it's a hell of a lot worse than teaching them to read in their own language. Are we seriously going to debate something that obvious or are we just going to keep watering down the goalposts? "Neither are they taking these children away from their family or village. " No one has claimed this. "They are introducing a supplemental window into the world." So is dropping dictionaries out of the sky. Neither program is above criticism from a cost effectiveness or absolute effectiveness standpoint. "Any knowledge of culture these children could have acquired through verbal communication with their parents will still be transferred. " Not making kids worse at talking to their parents seems like an extremely low bar to celebrate. "If elements of a culture are willingly abandoned by people when they are exposed to additional sources of culture, those abandoned fragments of culture are not to be mourned." This sort of blanket declaration about cultural genocide may sound great but more often is just vacuous bullshit by the people propagating it. Did Soviet Jews "willingly abandon" their heritage to fit in? Are Tibetans doing the same today? Apparently it's all ok as long as a non-profit company is involved. "Mrs. Jones, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is the Republicans and Libertarians have finally killed public education. The good news is we have some free tablets for your kids. They're all in Chinese but rest assured your children will still learn some English from their many verbal interactions with you. And if they gradually forget our culture it's no big deal after all it was totally voluntary!"
• cjbprime 14y ago
  Hi, Personal background: I work on this project, but only as a software engineer -- I didn't travel to Ethiopia, and don't have a development background (other than the last 6+ years at One Laptop Per Child). I'm not speaking for OLPC right now. > The development community know all about this and are scathing of it. People taking Approach A often think that the people taking Approach B are foolish and misguided (else they'd work on it themselves); it's not a point that carries normative weight by itself. We have to actually look at the arguments. > a) these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally - by orders of magnitude. Well, steady. The two villages we chose are entirely illiterate -- they have no literate adults, and no-one there has ever been to school. One of the villages has potential access to one school that's 10 miles away and 3000 feet lower, which is not a plausible trip. So now you've signed up to build two schools, and then find literate teachers who want to live in or spend all of their working time teaching in a remote illiterate village. And you realize that Oromo is highly dialectal, such that the two villages in this case speak dialects that aren't comprehensible to each other; your teacher probably doesn't know their dialect already. Is it still orders of magnitude cheaper than tablets? > b) More perniciously, the tablets educate in English or Amharic: not in the local language of the population in question, which these children would otherwise speak; their parents are often not fluent in either. There are no Oromo applications of any kind for Android, so in effect you're saying that this experiment should simply not happen, and these kids should not get to use technology. I don't agree with that. Even if it's successfully argued that teachers are a better solution for Ethiopia -- I certainly agree that a small class size and a brilliant teacher is a wonderful thing when it's available -- there are a hundred million kids in the world with no access to a school. That seems worth researching a potential amelioration for, right? Maybe you're missing that this is a pilot-stage experiment that only involved 40 children? It's not being proposed as country-wide policy.
  • paulsutter 14y ago
    This is an awesome project. Congratulations. Education needs to be reinvented all over the world. Research like this will help us discover how we really learn, and identify better ways to teach students everywhere.
  • politician 14y ago
• eddie_the_head 14y ago
  Actually most Oromo people can speak, and many can read/write in Amharic as it's the dominant national language.
  • cjbprime 14y ago
    It's the plurality national language (there's no single language with a greater adoption in Ethiopia) but it's not the majority language -- fewer than 50% of Ethiopians are able to use Amharic. So, "most people" in Ethiopia use a local language instead of Amharic.
    • eddie_the_head 14y ago
      I am actually from Ethiopia, and from what my parents who were raised there tell me, the education was in Amharic so they learned to read/speak it early on, alongside their morhertongue Somali. Of course ethnic groups tend to use their language first and Amharic for more official matters. So I don't really see what the problem with using Amharic and English is. You're reaching more kids and like another poster said, there's more resources and apps available in Amharic than Afaan Oromo.
• wisty 14y ago
  > a) these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally - by orders of magnitude. This is not a remotely scalable scheme, and frankly research budgets would be much better put to use working out how to distribute cheap teaching materials through existing education networks. I don't like to be harsh, but what is the quality of the teachers they are likely to get? A bad teacher can be worse than no teacher. By "bad teacher", I mean one who doesn't understand the material themselves. > b) More perniciously, the tablets educate in English or Amharic: not in the local language of the population in question, which these children would otherwise speak; their parents are often not fluent in either. It's a complex issue, but if people can only speak a local language they'll face heavy discrimination if they try to get a job elsewhere.
• forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
  "The Ethiopian government (a dictatorship) loves this project, because it is actively trying to exterminate local languages and culture." yeah, because local languages and culture is more important than big languages and big cultures. The fact that someone in a village says "hello", and in another they say "haello" because they are isolated is super super important. It is so much better that they can't travel out of their village so we can preserve their culture even when they don't want to.
  • Apocryphon 14y ago
    Knowing one's heritage is just as important as knowing the lingua franca. Neither should be diminished in favor of the other.
• peterhost 14y ago
  What really bothers me on this project, is that all accounts of it i've read sofar (i don't have an insider's view, which might make me think different) is that it sounds like "let's experiment with the savages and see if they can come up with something". It's like in the good old days of colonial empires. Do the little savages have brains ? How do savages's brains work ?? Are they really so different than ours ??? Does the size of the skull or caudal appendice explain it ? Drawing a caricature here, but principles don't change that much. Only thing it seems to prove is that kids are all naturally born hackers. It's what society does to them later on that takes that ability away (like using apps or loving Steve)