The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle wanted its Board of contributors to share their priorities and concerns with Jean-Claude Brizard, the new superintendent of the Rochester City School District. Here's what I had to say about it. Personally, I am not effected by this change since as residents of Brighton we are not part of the Rochester City School District :
Equip every pupil with a laptop
With the focus on reading, writing and arithmetic proficiency under the No Child Left Behind approach, the city school kids are in danger of falling behind in computer literacy as compared to their suburban peers. I would expect Brizard to take the lead with some outside-the-box approaches in this area. Maybe partner with business and philanthropic organizations to launch a one-laptop-per-child program. Not only would that provide the children with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves, it would also help improve their reading, writing and arithmetic skills, and maybe also help in keeping them off the streets with a resultant decrease in youth violence. Several U.S. corporations are involved in the $100 laptop project for kids around the globe, so the idea should not be as costly as it sounds.
In many countries around the world, computer education has worked effectively in breaking the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and violence and helping people move ahead in life. It's worth a try here.
—DEEPAK SETH BRIGHTON Seth is on the Board of Contributors. Dec 2,2007
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3 comments:
Deepak, I must respectfully disagree. I am not convinced that free laptops (stolen from taxpayers) will help when you have a great percentage of kids that can barely read and have little interest in learning much useful. Throwing expensive gadgets won't help imho.
And has it really worked elsewhere? How do we measure success? At what cost?
A little more on this:
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/throwing-laptops-at-problems.html
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/reaching-out-to-students-when-they-talk.html
Everything I've saved on education:
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/search/label/education
I knew I may face some flak for this proposal as smacking of welfarism.
I think if properly evaluated such a scheme may prove cost effective in terms of savings on books, reduced violence etc. The initial investment for a pilot project can come from a philanthropic/business organization. If they are willing to spend on this project around the globe, they might start off in their backyard.
Also their would be resultant benefits to local and US economy by more people using the web, ordering stuff, positive impetus to IT sector etc. Even if laptop is free, more than its cost can be recovered through subscriptions etc (like Japanese car manufacturers pricing cars chaep and making money on the spares)
I do not propose taxpayer monies to be used for this measure unless it is taxpayer neutral.
>> I knew I may face some flak for this proposal as smacking of welfarism.
Indeed! ;-)
>> reduced violence
Respectfully, I don't see the connection.
>> Also their would be resultant benefits to local and US economy by more people using the web, ordering stuff, positive impetus to IT sector etc. Even if laptop is free, more than its cost can be recovered
>> through subscriptions etc
If that's true, wouldn't it also make sense to just give free laptops to as many people as possible, city school children or not? That way we could benefit the economy much much more?
See Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy
http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
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