[OLPC India] Question about the rejection of OLDP in India.

[Knut Yrvin]

My short question is at the end. But first some background: 

The Hindu reports:

  "The case for giving a computer to every single is paedagogically
  suspect. It may actually be detrimental to the growth of creative
  and analytical abilities of the child", Education Secretary Sudeep
  Banerjee told the Planning Commission in a letter sent last month.

  Source: 
  http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200607250313.htm

In my view there seems to be two problems concerning the statement from 
Sudeep Banerjee. 

1. He don't seem to be updated on new science about the success of
   using computers for young kids. This articles shows the results
   from large scale tests of placing computers in public centres:

     http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/5865

   - Scientific articles: 

     http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/docs/Paper06.pdf
     http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/Publications.html

2. It's a politicians prerogative to not be updated in science. But a
   more serious thing is that he seems to be biased against computers
   in general, when the top politichian state the following in 
   The Hindu: 

    "We do not think that the idea of Prof Negroponte is mature enough
     to be taken seriously at this stage and no major country is
     presently following this. Even inside America, there is no much
     enthusiasm about this".

  I believe the thing we see is a philisofical issue. I base this on a
  the book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982)
  by Walter J. Ong (p 79 - 80):

    Most persons are surprised, and many distressed, to learn that
  essentially the same objections commonly urged today against
  computers were urged by Plato in the Phaedrus (274-7) and in the
  Seventh Letter against writing. Writing, Plato has Socrates say in
  the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind
  what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a
  manufactured product. The same of course is said of
  computers. Secondly, Plato's Socrates urges, writing destroys
  memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an
  external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing
  weakens the mind. Today, parents and others fear that pocket
  calculators provide an external resource for what ought to be the
  internal resource of memorized multiplication tables. Calculators
  weaken the mind, relieve it of the work that keeps it
  strong. Thirdly, a written text is basically unresponsive. If you
  ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an
  explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the
  same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the
  first place. In the modern critique of the computer, the same
  objection is put, "Garbage in, garbage out." Fourthly, in keeping
  with the agonistic mentality of oral cultures, Plato's Socrates also
  holds it against writing that the written word cannot defend itself
  as the natural spoken word can: real speech and thought always exist
  essentially in a context of give-and-take between real
  persons. Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural
  world. So are computers.  A fortiori, print is vulnerable to these
  same charges. (p. 79)

    In fact, as Havelock has beautifully shown (1963), Plato's entire
  epistemology was unwittingly a programmed rejection of the old oral,
  mobile, warm, personally interactive lifeworld of oral culture
  (represented by the poets, whom he would not allow in his
  Republic). The term idea, form, is visually based, coming from the
  same root as the Latin video, to see, and such English derivatives
  as vision, visible, or videotape. Platonic form was form conceived
  of by analogy with visible form. The Platonic ideas are
  voiceless. . . . (p. 80)

The Hindu also presented this statement:  

   "...If the Planning Commission has the kind of money that would be
    required for this scheme, it would be appropriate to utilize it
    for 'Universalisation of Secondary Education' for which, a concept
    paper has been lying with the Planning Commission for approval
    since November 2005," he said.

What does this imply?

Best regards 

Knut Yrvin