Uruguay's "One Laptop per Child" policy

Small changes in the Latin America's education reality

In the world's most democratic developing country according to a research of the Bertelsmann Foundation (Germany, 2008), the policy is also seem as a contribution to the political integration between civil society and the state. With 300 thousand computers, Uruguay was the first country to take concrete action in the program and still keeps the title of the largest participation so far in the whole world, a condition largely defended as one of the greatest realizations of the country's government by its current administration


By Jandré BATISTA
from Montevideo, URUGUAY


In a socio-political context, where access to the World Wide Web configures itself as a prerogative to social inclusion and to other principles derived from it, as a means of political participation and citizen co-construction, some left-oriented governments in Latin American do invest in digital inclusion policies by the introduction of portable computers in school environment. As a contemporary way of fomenting the education system by allowing the contact with the universe of informatics and reducing the social distance built between economically more favored classes and those who don't have access to new technologies, the international campaign One Laptop per Child (OLPC), also known as the "100 dollar computer", is little by little giving its first steps in order to become a reality in Latin America education.

As a social assistance policy, the proposal represents more than a benefit for education of economically disadvantaged students: the possibility of allowing access to the Internet receives even more meaningful contours. Apart of allowing contact with the profusion of networked knowledge, the Internet characteristics, as a open channel of social interactivity, raise the creation of new politic and democratic spaces through the social appropriations given by the people to the medium. As a right to have rights way, the idea of the process is that it may contribute to education as well as to the democracy of these countries.

Some examples of the application of this type of assistance policy can be observed in countries like Colombia, Peru and Uruguay. The three governments of these countries sum up together more the 760 thousand acquisitions of OLPC, which confer to the macro-region of Latin America the status of the most supporter of the program. Brazil and Paraguay are still discussing internally the issue - both maintain pilot programs -, and other countries such as Argentina and Costa Rica demonstrate the willing of taking part of it in the near future.

Political topic featured in Uruguay

In the world's most democratic developing country according to a research of the Bertelsmann Foundation (Germany, 2008), the policy is also seem as a contribution to the political integration between civil society and the state. With 300 thousand computers, Uruguay was the first country to take concrete action in the program and still keeps the title of the largest participation so far in the whole world, a condition largely defended as one of the greatest realizations of the country's government by its current administration.

More than postponing the damage of the government actions as a consequence of the world economical crisis, the president of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, Tabaré Vázquez - the first political of left inclinations to reach the top position in that country -, in a public act at the heart of the capital Montevideo in March 7th, 2009, while defending its own administration, also tried to advocate incisively the OLPC policy in benefit of the students of the public school system. As sustained by him in the occasion, "it means a profound educational innovation and a vigorous democratization in the possibilities of the Uruguayan society of accessing the information, the knowledge, the communication, and the recreation".

Does it really mean all that?

The OLPC Association is a United States non-profit organization set up to oversee the creation of a cheap, affordable portable computer in order to be used on education. While the first attempts were to try to create a technology equipment of up to U$100,00 as price, in the first semester of 2007 the value was raised to US$175,00 and is still increasing. Besides that, another problem is related with the philosophical perspective of the project: some critics say that the OLPC seems to deny the idea of free software, non-profit technology and liberty of knowledge diffusion in a strong way by, for example, keeping the relation between the organization and the giant Microsoft Incorporation, which intends to commercialize a kind of special operation system suitable for those subnotebooks, as they are also called. More than this, several companies, as Intel, have started to visualize the idea as a potential market niche: as a consequence, the humanitarian question looses its proposal and the cost of a simple notebook tends to increase because of the run for profit.

In an educational perspective, some questions were raised about how the notebooks could effectively help kid's education and, in the same direction, whether the teachers of the developing countries would know how to explore properly this resource: according to some critics of the program, a consistent methodology don't seem to be a concernment in the policies of these countries. Nevertheless, another perspective emerges: the question whether the notebooks would really help or substitute the teachers, and in the same time direct the students towards other uses beyond scholar's proposal.

"A small machine with a big mission": some characteristics of the OLPC

The first manufactured model, the XO Laptop, is a low-power computer, integrated (there are no moving parts), flexible (it gains the form of a suitcase for mobility an e-book), waterproof and durable (more than nomal ones). There is no hard drive, optical media nor floppy drives, only a flash memory and USB ports and a SD card slot. The operating system is based on Linux (Red Rat/Fedora Core). Other features included are the possibility of being charged by the sunlight and the "extended range" of the wireless network, very superior from the one found on conventional notebooks.


(Published: 10.04.2009.)