They need
books, not computers.
That was one of the major criticisms of the OLPC, but hte
critics
didn't understand that the OLPC with suitable software and e-texts
was a LESS EXPENSIVE replacement for textbooks.
I'm not convinced that is actually true. I'm perfectly ready to
believe it's true if you consider only up-front monetary costs, but
there are a lot of other costs involved, such as the failure modes (one
failure in a relatively fragile bit of electronics and _all_ your texts
go poof, to name just one problem), the lack of separability (you can
read at most one of those texts at a time, no matter how many people
are available), and support infrastructure needed (a book can be taken
almost anywhere, without anything additional, and still work; a
computer needs, at a minimum, a source of electrical power).
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