The One Laptop Per Child Deception
Audrey Watters, writing in Hacked Education, provides an interesting critique of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) movement, starting with the recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank in rural Peru which indicated that providing laptops does not improve test scores.
This should be no surprise. Test scores and academic success are influenced most significantly by socioeconomic factors that affect children well before they have even started school (see here and here), like malnutrition and poor health; exposure to smoke, lead and other environmental insults; and lack of early exposure to reading.
Nevertheless, one might wonder why anyone would believe that computer technology would provide more bang for the nonprofit buck than investing in nutrition- and poverty-reducing programs or building water treatment plants. These investments would not only save children’s lives but help improve their health and nutrition, thus reducing premature births, cognitive impairment and learning disabilities. Furthermore, when one considers that the laptops were not allowed to be taken home, that many of the families lacked electricity and internet access