But the potential for very low cost computers is wildly more than we have made of it. Because inexpensive computing is a crummy business. The margins are too low and the economic model is that of a commodity, a prospect that frightens American business. US companies just do not know how to tackle the low end. Developing countries look longingly at developed nations, with an eye toward copying their education systems.
Instruction is a serial, repetitive process driven by strict norms of curriculum and age.
As my MIT colleagues Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert are fond of pointing out, such schools are an extreme form of age segregation. Only schoolchildren with siblings get the real advantages of age integration. Age integration is a fundamental change we need to consider as part of revisiting the concept of school. The little red schoolhouse One-room schools are often believed to be a sad consequence of poverty. But instead of a problem, they may be a solution.