[Olpc-open] Let them have laptops

[Sameer Verma]

John Kintree wrote:
> On Saturday 02 February 2008 09:05 pm, Sameer Verma wrote:
>   
>>  Keep in mind
>> that a good proportion of the billion plus people in India (the target
>> of the article) are quite well fed. Many of them just don't care about
>> the rest.
>>     
>
> Understood.  And, I think that many of the people who express opposition to 
> the XO laptop on the grounds that the $200 apiece could be better spent on 
> food do not actually care about hungry children either.  I think their real 
> reason for opposition is they want to maintain the current structure of power 
> in which a relatively small percent of the population makes and imposes 
> decisions on the rest of us.
> Regards,
> John Kintree
>
>   
John,
You've hit the nail right on the head! Imagine a channel that bypasses 
the current "education" structure and allows students to discover much 
more about history than what their schools want them to know. For 
instance, all through my history classes in India (where I went to 
school) never did we learn about the involvement of Indians with the 
Irish and Germans. All we read was about the Indians and the British. 
Imagine my surprise when I read about it the first time. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu-German_Conspiracy

Now, I am not sure why my school books didn't address the subject. Maybe 
it was too much material, or perhaps it didn't serve the agenda of 
authors. I'll never know.

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/