July 31, 2006
One Up, One Down For One Laptop Per Child
Acting on the advice of the nation’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (The Chronicle, July 27), government officials in India have decided to pass on Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project. Mr. Negroponte had hoped to sell one million of his $100 laptops to India, but national officials derided the program as "pedagogically suspect" and argued that splurging on the machines would prevent the country from spending money on classrooms and teachers.
Fiscal pragmatism may in fact have been just one of the factors that led India away from One Laptop Per Child, reports ZDNet UK. Mr. Negroponte, the Web site recalls, was the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab—which opened an outpost in Mumbai before shutting the operation down, amid considerable criticism, last year. According to ZDNet, "bad feelings left behind are still strong enough to render Nicholas Negroponte…persona non grata within the subcontinent—and guarantee the rejection of any project with his name attached."
Despite the unpromising news from India, One Laptop Per Child continues to push forward. Earlier this month Nigeria paid for one million of Mr. Negroponte’s cheap laptops, according to Vanguard. —Brock Read
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