[martey]

A lot of comments here seem to suggest that we should discount or ignore this paper because the OLPC program had other benefits (increasing uptake of lower cost laptops worldwide, giving children computer skills, etc.). This is a reasonable argument assuming that most people have only read the free abstract, but this isn't the conclusion that the authors come in the actual paper. Instead, they suggest that the program might have been more successful with increased teacher training and internet access in schools.

I was able to access the NBER version of the paper, but it looks like working copies are also available in a number of other locations:

  - https://publications.iadb.org/en/laptops-long-run-evidence-one-laptop-child-program-rural-peru
  - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5391874
  - https://www.ofermalamud.com/research

[bawolff]

While that's undoubtedly true, is that really feasible?

Training programs are expensive, and i imagine difficult to conduct across potentially remote areas with underdeveloped infrastructure.

Internet access is maybe more doable now with starlink, but how practical was it at the time? I imagine this varries significantly with region, maybe in some cases all that was needed was LTE modem -> wifi, but if actually new infrastructure needed to be set up, that could be very pricey very fast.

Like everything its all about trade offs, if olpc did those things would they have budget for other things?

[em-bee]

the only way to improve education is to train more and better teachers. that's even completely independent of projects like OLPC. asking if training teachers is feasible is simply the wrong question. arguing that it is expensive is the wrong argument.

education and teacher training is the only way to achieve progress in this world. and if training is expensive or difficult to achieve then that's a challenge we need to overcome, not an excuse not to do it.

[zozbot234]

There are viable alternatives to Internet access, notably offline resources as provided by projects such as Kiwix. I'm not sure to what extent the projects described in OP actively leveraged these efforts with any real effectiveness. If it didn't, those OLPC mini-laptops would've been functionally equivalent to glorified calculators, and the results would be quite unsurprising.

[hulitu]

> the program might have been more successful with increased teacher training and internet access in schools.

With teacher training, yes. Internet access in schools would have allowed more propaganda and surveillance, while disturbing the education process.

[alephnerd]

> because the OLPC program had other benefits (increasing uptake of lower cost laptops worldwide, giving children computer skills, etc.)...

What does that matter if food insecurity, stunted growth, low quality K-6 schools, and other critical issues remain?

From a human capital development perspective, the amount of money spent per year on OLPC could have subsidized a number of similar programs that are both cheaper and have been documented to lead to better developmental indicators.

And it wasn't like OLPC actually placed educators to teach programming at the K-10 level in most of the target regions.

On top of that, broadband and internet penetration didn't expand until the 2010s with Asian commodity telecom equipment being mass produced and exported to developing markets - so what use was a computer which had no internet to a household that was almost always in the lowest income bracket in a developing country?!?

This is why evidence-based policymaking has become the norm and why Banerjee and Duflo won a Nobel Prize.

Edit: can't reply

You (most likely) grew up in a first world country and in the top 5% of households globally.

For the target communities for OLPC, much more basic needs like clean water, school access, nutrition access, and other services were either limited or functionally non-existent.

Much of rural Peru during OLPC (the 2000s) [0] had HDIs comparable to what Laos, Cambodia, and Bangladesh today.

More critically, Peru back then used to be more developed than China [0], yet China's HDI has now outpaced Peru developmentally because local government took an evidence-based approach to developmental policymaking thanks to guidance from Stanford's REAP group [1]

I'm sure you can recognize that the policies needed in a developing country are entirely different from those in a developed country.

[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/PER+CHN/?levels=1+...

[1] - https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/reap

[Spooky23]

Why should I have gone to college?

My outcomes would be better if I were just richer, smarter and better looking.

[readthenotes1]

There's a real doubt whether college is a reasonable investment these days. The costs are outrageous and the improvement, for society, seems lacking.

If you want to be richer, smarter, and be better looking, food and shelter security might go a long ways

[alephnerd]

The math of college still holds true in the US depending on what you major in [0][1].

Most non-college goers are not attending apprenticeship programs or joining union jobs - which nowadays increasingly require a college education [2].

This isn't the 1970s anymore where you can go to the local factory and screw parts by hand - manufacturing, carpentry, metalworking, and other industrial arts increasingly require STEM fundamentals which for most students they can only acquire in some form of college (be it 2-year or 4-year).

I've seen this first hand now that I've been taking carpentry courses at my local CC as a side hobby - the union track apprenticeship program that's part of the CC expects an associates degree at a minimum.

[0] - https://www.ppic.org/publication/is-college-worth-it/

[1] - https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60832ecef615231cedd30...

[2] - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf

[cameronh90]

The OLPC project clearly didn’t achieve its aims, but how would they have known that without trying?

More recently, the impact of smart phones on the developing world has been transformational, suggesting some of the ideas behind OLPC may have been good, but the specific implementation lacking. Thanks to smart phones, developing communities now have access to media in global languages, online education, finance, communication, markets (without having to travel for miles), disaster recovery, health resources and much more.

You can even now see rural villages themselves prioritise phone infrastructure over many things that on the surface seem more important - such as by fixing the phone charger before they fix the plumbing!