[dundee] Taylug Weekly Articles 8 - POMS

[Robert McWilliam]

On Sun, Feb 03, 2008 at 03:04:42PM +0000, Gary Short wrote:
> if you look back the thread, I asserted that teachers on the ground
> was a better way to spend the money. No one came back to argue a
> counter point, 

I thought I had answered that point (and so did others) but I'll try
again. The laptops can offer a lot more value for money. In this
country $100 might (very optimistically) pay for an hour of a teachers
time. If we assume (again very optimistically[1]) that in
$developing_country teachers are willing to work for 1/10 what they
are here, your $100 gets you 10 hours of a teachers time. Which is
worth more: a laptop loaded with text books and connected to the
internet allowing a student to work on their own and with other
students as much as they want for years or 10 hours of a teacher
explaining something?

You can quibble the numbers (I mostly made them up) but I think you
need a few orders of magnitude of a shift before the teachers are a
better use of the money. And if you can find teachers willing to work
for fractions of a cent per hour I'll be very impressed. 

    Robert

[1] You could probably get teachers at that cost in many countries,
they just wont be very good teachers. A lot of developed countries
readily grant visas for teachers so you have to compete with developed
countries to attract good teachers. Not having to move to another
country (and reduced cost of living[2]) will be of value to many local
teachers but I doubt it would convince them to work for 1/10 of what
they can get elsewhere.

[2] There is usually a reduced standard of living too...

________________________________________________________ 
Robert McWilliam    rmcw at allmail.net     www.ormiret.com

Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day,
expressed in M&Ms: 250
	-- Harper's Index