Laptops for the world's children

I'm floored! I can hardly believe that this is being done by a nonprofit company! Perhaps this is part of my concern, who funds a project such as this, and why? The XO laptop computer is considered to be the prototype for a project that would have the world's children, poor included, up and running with their own laptops. The lack of knowledge on my end makes it hard for me to come to any definitive opinion, other than to say that I understand, quite simply, that education is the ladder upward and out of poverty for terribly impoverished nations. When you think of the computer as fair education- rather, the medium for fair education to the worlds' poor, it begins to make sense. The infrastructure necessary to get this up and running on a worldwide scale is of an unthinkable magnitude; my better instincts see red flags and holes in the thinking. How do you secure these devices for children who may be in danger for simply possessing something valuable and out of the scope of most of the adults, for example? And whoever funds this program, I'm guessing, will also be in charge of the curriculum, I assume? A one world curriculum could then be fathomable- a standard, worldwide, education on worldwide terms in today's market. Sounds ok, but who agrees on a worldwide core standard? If these are used with local municipalities allowed to have their own, unique educational rights in tact, I'm wait to see the children of the world flourish under such an idea, otherwise- yikes!

Let's get back to education

Dear Mr. President:
What do you make of the work of an author like Herbert Kohl or Jonathan Kozol, people who reveal, through a lifetime of dedicated work, the effects that sub-par education have on the children of districts that have routinely been underfunded? Why is it that some of America's major cities, powerhouses of commerce like New York and Chicago, seem bent on returning to segregation in the schools, and why is it that we as a nation allow the curriculum and conditions of these schools to vastly differ from those of the more fortunate, when children have no say so in the matter. This curriculum is designed to embrace the goals of a perspective that dehumanizes the poor, inner city, often minority child, but also completely misrepresents him to the point of disenfranchisement if he's not to overcome all odds and rise to the occasion (when mere survival would likely be the goal of most adults under the same situations). Why is it that children tarry with scripted education under the guise of equal opportunity- a teaching system that has no time for the arts or music or even recess, all seen as waste of time in the pursuit of higher scores on tests with systematic bias built in? And one more why question to remain unanswered, Mr. President- is why is are these blatantly immoral and potentially illegal agendas and work-programmed based "educational" schemas allowed to flourish in these schools, continuing to disappoint on all levels of measured success and your response to the situation that obviously isn't working is to merely allow states to abandon NCLB on the grounds that they adhere to another systematic, losing system. In closing, a what question. What would we allow our children if truly equal opportunity were a priority, an allocation of funds and resources that is fair and equal across all lines, equipping teachers with the freedom to create and inspire a fresh and individualized, honest  lesson plan with a vision that respects the ideal that our nation's children, unique in their abilities and gifts, are our future- or, as Kohl puts it, "a vision of what it (society) might become if it's democratic ideals are taken seriously" (p.126).