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.What the article doesn't mention is that: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.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.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.