Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves
Personal background: my wife works in development and has organized education projects in Ethiopia. The development community know all about this and are scathing of it.<p>What the article doesn't mention is that:<p>a) these tablets are vastly more expensive than just hiring teachers locally - by orders of magnitude. This is not a remotely scalable scheme, and frankly research budgets would be much better put to use working out how to distribute cheap teaching materials through existing education networks.<p>b) More perniciously, the tablets educate in English or Amharic: not in the local language of the population in question, which these children would otherwise speak; their parents are often not fluent in either.<p>The Ethiopian government (a dictatorship) loves this project, because it is actively trying to exterminate local languages and culture. This provides for them a route to do so.