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Education Technology

Zuckerberg and Gates-Backed Startup Seeks To Shake Up African Education 119

theodp writes The WSJ reports an army of teachers wielding Nook tablets and backed by investors including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to bring cheap [$6.50/month], internet-based, private education to millions of the world's poorest children in Africa and Asia. In Kenya, 126,000 students are enrolled at 400+ Bridge International Academies that have sprung up across the country since the company was founded in 2009. Bridge's founders are challenging the long-held assumption that governments rather than companies should lead mass education programs. The Nook tablets are used to deliver lesson plans used by teachers (aka "scripted instruction"), as well as to collect test results from students to monitor their progress."
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Zuckerberg and Gates-Backed Startup Seeks To Shake Up African Education

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    Hasn't Africa suffered enough from the good old "missionary spirit" and its endless raft of unintended consequences?
    • I'm with you.

      Missionary work is ultimately what got native Americans.

      The biggest mistake they made was giving up their way of life and their world view.

      • Re:Missionaries (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bmajik ( 96670 ) <matt@mattevans.org> on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:28AM (#49267467) Homepage Journal

        Small Part Native American here. Grandpa and mom are buried on the Res.

        Not that my heritage should matter, but some people can't hear the message until they've decided what bucket to put the messenger in....

        How is the way of life and/or world view of the Native Americans worth saving?

        Same question for impoverished rural Africans?

        We are having this conversation only because an objectively superior culture with an objectively superior propensity for technical development has built this amazing medium for our use.

        My ancestors were excellent hunters, excellent farmers, and excellent stewards of natural resources. There are many things to admire and respect about what they did.

        Ultimately, however, I'm glad I don't live in a house made of animal skin; I'm glad I have modern medicine; I'm glad my other ancestors - my white European ones - have shot themselves into space, and have opened a way for my children to someday get off this rock.

        In many ways, Humans of all colors and shapes are still participating in the tribal violence that shaped native Americans and still shapes many Africans.

        Some tribes are better run than others, with better results to show for it. Adapt or die.

        • My ancestors were ... excellent stewards of natural resources.

          Your ancestors hunted North American mega-fauna to extinction, and regularly set fire to the prairies. Destruction of the environment by Native Americans was limited primarily by their lack of technology with which to do so.

          • No finger pointing allowed. All of our ancestors, as many of us continue to do so today, made mistakes due to lack of options, or ignorance.
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              Not to mention the fact that regularly setting fire to the prairies was often considered a *good* thing. It's kind of like the whole wolf issue -- people killed the wolves and then the prairie started dying. Why? Because the herd animals were no longer doing their job -- staying clumped up and tilling/fertilizing the ground in one place, then running as a group to another place, being herded by wolves. Instead they'd spread out and graze down the entire area without spending enough time breaking up the

          • by Anonymous Coward

            It was the small population that limited damage, not the lack of technology. Our contemporary level of damage is still determined more by our population than our technology.

            As an aside, setting fire to the prairie was actually beneficial (at the level they were able to do it) and we still manage prairies with fire to this day. Even without human intervention, prairies regularly burn.

        • by chihowa ( 366380 )

          Some tribes are better run than others, with better results to show for it. Adapt or die.

          I'm in the same boat, heritage-wise. My nick here was supposed to be a jab at my tribe's early assimilation into European culture (it seemed way more clever when I was a kid), but ultimately it was assimilation that led my tribe to be much better off than many others, even if we are much more "white".

          Efforts like the one in the article are less about preserving failing tribes and cultures and more about assimilating their individuals into our own. Hopefully, they bring the good aspects of their culture with

          • I'm in the same boat, heritage-wise.

            Well, we can all say the same thing if we go back far enough, can't we? It is a sad irony that our once evolutionarily advantageous inability to see beyond what divides us to focus on the joy and beauty in all of us that make us all uniquely the same (as well as identically unique), is what might well eventually destroy us. But then I never dreamed the world I grew up in would be one in which I might actually be killed by a robot. So it goes...

            • As Mike Skinner from The Streets says, I'm 45th generation Roman. Go back far enough and we're all 2000th generation African. And since the age of cheap jet travel, we'll all be a mix of everything again within the next 45 generations. Makes racism seem kind of pointless.
          • Part of the reason that they're still stuck in a failing culture is because ...

            ... they got fucked over.

            FTFY

        • by Anonymous Coward

          There may be a time when we again need to live in a house made of animal skin, hunt, fish and farm.

          In that case, all the lawyers, politicians, and Women's Studies professors will starve (unless they are Hot, the Women's Studies professors that is).

        • How is the way of life and/or world view of the Native Americans worth saving?

          Same question for impoverished rural Africans?

          We are having this conversation only because an objectively superior culture with an objectively superior propensity for technical development has built this amazing medium for our use.

          I'm with you buddy. It's the noble savage myth that hippies love to perpetuate. Easter Island is a great example for exposing that drivel.
          Old cultures got taken over by new cultures because that's how evolution works. Ultimately we all have the same ancestors which first stood upright in Africa, and we'll all end up some munge of coffee coloured monkeys in the next few hundred years, so any talk of race seems pointless in the grand scheme of things. Adapt or die, regardless of your race.

      • by dave420 ( 699308 )

        That's not really comparable to this programme, as we're not talking about people who have not been contacted before, nor are we talking about sending over church people to lie to the natives in order to get them to change their ways with threats of hell-fire and eternal damnation, or bribe them into such changes with food, tobacco, or booze.

        Education is a very powerful tool indeed - the more educated the world becomes, the lower the birthrate and the higher the quality of life. That should be something we

        • Education, eduschmation ...

          The plot is formulaic. Instead of the incentives you listed, " ... change their ways with threats of hell-fire and eternal damnation, or bribe them into such changes with food, tobacco, or booze. ... " substitute "education."

          It's still the fucking cheese in the mousetrap.

      • Re:Missionaries (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @12:10PM (#49268369)

        Missionary work is ultimately what got native Americans.

        Comparing Africa to the Americas is very misleading. Native American populations were decimated by Old World diseases. That didn't happen in Africa, where natives had long been exposed to smallpox, measles, etc. In fact, their greater resistance to many tropical diseases, which disproportionately killed white colonists, helped protect them. If you look at Africa today, the areas that are the most prosperous, are those areas where colonialism was deep and pervasive, leaving behind strong institutions, and economies linked to the wider world. The least prosperous areas are those with little colonial influence, especially isolated inland areas.

        The biggest mistake they made was giving up their way of life and their world view.

        The opposite is true. By any objective measure, those that gave up tribalism and adopted western ways, are doing the best. If you look at income, infant mortality, maternal mortality, violence, longevity, nutrition, literacy, health, sexual abuse, alcoholism, or any other measure you can think of, tribal societies are at the absolute bottom.

        • Nah.

          Your unit of measure is flawed.

          People who have been decimated by invasion would not agree with your definition of "success."

          • They wouldn't so much disagree as twist their worldview around until the remnants of colonialism are somehow their ancestors 'great work'.

            See also any liberal Americans reaction to the fact that slaves were lousy workers and didn't build any significant wealth.

            • Sorry.

              Your argument poisons itself with poorly thought-out extremes.

              "Colonialism" is a state established after the victory.

              " ,,, any liberal American[']s reaction ..."

              It is disingenuous to make such a statement knowing that neither you nor I (or anyone else) is capable of meeting with, and inquiring as to, the reaction of all liberal Americans.

              Therefore, your post contains 7.5 lbs of vacuous bullshit.

              But thank you for playing.

              • Because liberals haven't built their own mythology?

                • Because you have not interviewed all liberals, and you failed to have the reading comprehension skills needed to gather that from my post, or, more likely, you are being an asshole because you are rabidly tied to an agenda, and further, you wasted both our time.

          • Those people would be dead by now anyway. As a descendant of one of those decimated, I can authoritatively state that I'm better off because of it.
            • That's YOU.

            • Recall the phenomenon where the first immigrants do not know the language, work in shit jobs, and are outcasts in the culture.

              Recall that the elders of the second generation object to the "Americanization" of their children and want to teach the young the ways of their roots.

              Recall that the third generation are fully Americanized and want the immigrants to go back where they came from.

              You are better off because you rode the backs of the victors.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Hey we need a new pool of cheap H1Bs

      The Chinese, Indian and Eastern European devs are starting to get costly

      • The Chinese, Indian and Eastern European devs are starting to get costly

        That's not necessarily a bad thing. As the living standards an education levels of each group goes up eventually places run out of cheap backwaters to outsource to. Eventually the whole world gets more skilled and more prosperous.

        • But that means all the disposable tat we love to buy will get more expensive!

          • I pretty much hate our "disposable" culture anyways. Building things to a higher quality and repairing them when they break is just much more resource friendly - and you end up with better stuff to boot.

            Which is better - a $15 waffle iron from Walmart that breaks and needs to be replaced every other year - or a $75 one that will last 25 years and when it does eventually break can be fixed for $10 to run another year? Which uses less raw materials over the life of the product? Think about not only the con

    • by zidium ( 2550286 )

      They're doing much more amazing stuff over at www.worldreader.org! Delivering thousands of hardened, solar-powered Kindle eInk devices filled with 1,000s of books for a complete classical education to children all across Central and Eastern Africa. I believe in them so much I donate 10% of every paycheck to them and have given them $10s of thousands so far. My money went directly to give ~2,000 Ugandans more material than their city has ever known (population 500,000). Check them out.

    • Gatea and Zuckerberg. Yeah, I trust them about as much as I would King Leopold II of Belgium, were he still with us.
  • ... as well as to collect test results from students to monitor their progress.

  • Pencils (Score:5, Informative)

    by ISoldat53 ( 977164 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:44AM (#49267111)
    The school I support in Zambia is happy just to get pencils and pens. They have no use for anything electronic.We are working to get them enough electricity to have a light on when it gets dark. Sometimes we in the west have no idea the rudimentary conditions some folks live in.
    • Re:Pencils (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zidium ( 2550286 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:52AM (#49267191) Homepage

      That's why http://www.worldreader.org/ [worldreader.org] delivers hardened (they replace the shell with rubber), solar-powered eink Kindles. A single day out in the Sun (where the kids spend a lot of their school day, anyway) and it is good for 30+ days. The kids are trained for 2 weeks (with a "pet egg") on how to properly care for / handle fragile equipment before they are loaned the kindles during school hours. Each kindle comes stocked with over 1,000 educational books. The literacy rate *shoots up* in every area they deliver them, mostly in Central and East Africa. They have a *very* small operational budget, so anything you give them goes a *long* way (compared to most charities).

      • by aliquis ( 678370 )

        Here in Sweden the amount of money to the migration office over four (possibly five?) years is supposed to be closer to 160 billion SEK by now.

        40 billion SEK / year would be 4.6 billion USD.

        I think that's intended to cover the cost of the immigrants the first three years but integration suck so the cost is likely higher and last longer.

        Anyway, those 4.6 billion USD / year would of course IMHO be much better spent on education in the poorest region and possibly spent on water wheels, toilets, sewage treatmen

        • by dave420 ( 699308 )
          It makes sense to tackle the immediate problem of people living in terrible conditions but who have the ability to leave by accepting them, as it doesn't cost much and properly-treated immigrants (given free language lessons, free training) can be an incredible boon to ageing European populations. At the same time, it makes just as much sense to spend money to stem the flow of those who immigrate out of sheer necessity. Tackling both helps everyone - there and in Europe.
        • Here in Sweden the amount of money to the migration office over four (possibly five?) years is supposed to be closer to 160 billion SEK by now.

          40 billion SEK / year would be 4.6 billion USD.

          I think that's intended to cover the cost of the immigrants the first three years but integration suck so the cost is likely higher and last longer.

          Anyway, those 4.6 billion USD / year would of course IMHO be much better spent on education in the poorest region and possibly spent on water wheels, toilets, sewage treatment plants, tree plantation, modern farming equipment, solar cells and such if there was money left over.

          Umm... OK...
          You DO acknowledge that you are uninformed about the subject you are expressing your opinion on.
          Only it appears that you don't exactly realize that.
          Nor the consequences of your lack of knowledge and understanding of the problem, on the process and the final product of you forming the ideas on the subject.

          I.e. That money... Sweden is NOT spending that money to solve the problems in Africa.
          Sweden is spending that money to solve the problems in SWEDEN.
          I.e. To integrate those immigrants into Swedi

      • Good cause, I made a donation. My wife uses my Galaxy Tab to display study materials for her nursing certificate. A world of information posted by others studying the same thing. The solar powered Kindles sound wonderful, I might get one for myself.
      • by nbauman ( 624611 )

        Each kindle comes stocked with over 1,000 educational books. The literacy rate *shoots up* in every area they deliver them, mostly in Central and East Africa. They have a *very* small operational budget, so anything you give them goes a *long* way (compared to most charities).

        I started working in educational technology in the 1960s. I've seen major fads come and go.

        Here's the most important thing I've learned: Always ask them if they have published a study in a peer-reviewed journal about their success (or failure). I didn't see any studies like that on their web site.

        It's pretty easy to put together a pr stunt for the cameras and collect some happy kids who love reading. It's pretty difficult to deliver useful results with a sustained effort.

    • by nbauman ( 624611 )

      They're not educating people. They're teaching rote memorization.

      A friend of mine was in the Peace Corps teaching science in a small village in Africa.

      They had never seen ice before.

      He decided to show them ice. He used a portable gas-powered refrigerator to freeze some water. He put a piece of ice in a test tube, heated it with a candle, and showed them how the ice became water.

      One kid, who was a little more clever than the others, challenged him. The kid didn't accept my friend's argument that the ice beca

  • by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:00AM (#49267247) Homepage

    If step 1 is not kill all the current warlords and government leaders it will fail.

    An uneducated population is a lot easier to control than an educated one, These corrupt and evil leaders that have kept Africa in a constant state of turmoil and fear will not have anything to do with improving the education of the people.

    Because if you educate them, they will learn that they are being abused and rise up. 100 men with machine guns are no match for 1,000,000 angry people with rocks and sticks.

    • If step 1 is not kill all the current warlords and government leaders it will fail.

      The CIA fully agrees - history has shown that strategy always works...

      Though it's a fair point that their focus should be on the means of communication rather than on implementing a curriculum. If the people have affordable 'net and there are classes in their language that they can gain immediate benefit from, everything else will sort itself out. Parents will ensure that their children learn the long-term benefit stuff (sa

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      It's up to the locals to do that. Locals need to choose things like rule of law, free markets, and popularly elected government. Otherwise it can't be sustained. The things that outsiders can do are:

      - stop meddling
      - show a positive example -- like Botswana [wikipedia.org]
      - trade
      - don't deny weapons and ammunition to people who need them to protect themselves

      • supplying weapons is meddling

        • by Kohath ( 38547 )

          Denying people the ability to acquire weapons is meddling. Any kind of trade could also be called meddling, or refusing to trade. But if you trade goods, including weapons, without choosing sides, locals get to choose their own path.

          • if you trade goods, including weapons, without choosing sides, locals get to choose their own path

            That will never happen.

            • by Kohath ( 38547 )

              That will never happen.

              I guess there's no point in talking about it then. Knowing the future must make reading the news a little boring for you.

    • We've already tried step 1 many, many times. We're pretty good at killing warlords and toppling governments. What we aren't good at is filling the power vacuum that follows.

      • by Lumpy ( 12016 )

        You are incorrect. The USA and CIA dont kill warlords, they replace them with our preferred warlords.
        Very large difference.

    • If step 1 is not kill all the current warlords and government leaders it will fail.

      Do you understand that Africa is a big continent, and not every region is governed by warlords?

      • All Africa's leaders will become warlords, after cable news tell mainstream America to call them "warlords" and shows a few of them in native headgear speaking some durned surr-spishuss soundin furrin langudge.

  • by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:10AM (#49267315) Journal

    Looking at our own educational systems, both in the US and Europe, I'm not too sure that we're the right one's to show the Africans how to do it properly.

    We're so geared towards diplomas that our higher education facilities have turned into diploma printing machines. Whether people learn actual skills or are able to actually use the knowledge that is ground into their heads seems less and less important.

    So I'm not really too sure whether we shouldn't just eat a slice of humble pie in that regard. OTOH, perhaps this startup truly will be effective. In that case, I'm all for applying what they'll learn to our own schools.

    • We see a lot of politicians and people in the corporate world that equate corporatization of something with "making it better."

      Gates has always had corporatization in his foundation deals. It's probably happening here, too.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Given their track record, I'd trust them as much as the drug dealer in the shady park in my neighborhood (or most probably less).

  • by tekrat ( 242117 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:37AM (#49267525) Homepage Journal

    Ladies and Gentlemen; the solution is not simply to provide kids with an education. We've got to shake up the constant warfare, dictatorships and starvation.

    And there is a solution. It's called commerce.

    Ladies and Gentlemen; I present the humble Volkswagen Beetle. The original I mean --the rear-engined, air-cooled one.

    The tooling for the car exists in both Brazil and Mexico, where it's no longer made, so that is cheap to aquire. You then need to build a factory, which employs people, and you need to start building the car, which employs people. This builds the economy; which creates other businesses.

    People then buy the car, and the car can be exported into other African nations. Furthermore, you stamp out parts for export worldwide, to countries where the car used to be sold, to those who still run them.

    The car is perfect for Africa, where roads are not great, and the car is durable, simple, easy to repair, and cheap on gas. Its construction is some African Nation would raise the economy of the entire continent.

    And then they can build their own schools instead of needing the money of billionaires.

    • cheap on gas

      As a serial bug owner, I can tell you that 18 MPG was the best you could expect.

      • Not to mention air pollution, which is perhaps the primary reason it's no longer made - even in Brazil and Mexico.

      • by pz ( 113803 )

        Really? I used to get 30 mpg when everything was in perfect tune. The trick, though, was it was very easy to fall off of that global optimum, so you had to keep continually tuning and tweaking if efficiency was the goal. If you didn't care so much, then it was a wonderfully reliable car. And, sure 18 mpg was easy to obtain.

        • You know there's is more to a car's pollution output than just mpg right?
          If there's one thing I've learnt in my travels, it is that the car is evil. Any country without car infrastructure should skip it altogether and opt for pedestrian/bicycle/moped/public transport. it is the only viable model that can scale and minimises pollution.
    • The major powers are not interested in bettering the common African man, they are interested in resource extraction and exploitation. The reason Africa is so poor is: 1-Agriculteral subsidies have wiped out the local farmers. 2-Import duties have wiped out any manufacturing they might try to get going. 3-Any time they manage to do something right, the West comes in and takes it from them. 4-The West deliberately undermines (and kills) any local government that doesn't support them over the interests of
  • by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:43AM (#49267583)

    The average person in a LOT of the countries in Africa makes less than $2 a day, the bulk of which goes to pay for food so they don't starve and they often have to subsistence farm on top of that because $2 doesn't go very far. $6.50 is laughable. They need light, pencils, paper and hell even electricity long before they need a surface tablet.

    But it's not like I expected Zuckerberg to get this. He's the quintessential rich guy now that doesn't understand the little people.

    • Someone on $2 a day is outside the monetary economy. They do not pay for food and shelter with money. p. Do they need surface tablets? Hell, no - they need large format Android phones.
    • And I suppose you understand "the little people".

  • by Zeio ( 325157 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @11:07AM (#49267819)

    Gates and Zuck want to farm the entire human race for wage slaves. The oligarchs want to pluck the best and brightest from wherever they may be and utilize them.

    These countries need fresh water, a reliable food supply and the most rudimentary things for education, eg, paper and pencils. These tools want to throw keyboards at the world hoping to farm out another hidden gem like Ramanujan and pluck them like cheap underpaid fruit.

    • If that's what Gates and Zuckerberg are thinking, I commend them for thinking about the long, long term. Anyways, if that's the plan, it's win-win for future software companies and Africa. I suppose US software engineers might lose, but who cares?

      • by Zeio ( 325157 )

        I'll suggest something here. Some cultures have the ability to innovate. Some do not. No judgement. But trying to shortcut bypass and undermine the ones that innovate to get sub market talent does not come without a long term price.

        Do laud the rapists who take advantage of this because they have a huge pile of monopoly money is really sad.

        Zuck and Gates could make a few universities like MIT-Caltech-etc that are meant to home grow STEM superstars of the native born and re-invest in our country which is full

        • And I suppose you belong to the superior race-*ahem* culture that is capable of innovating, and you can't understand why anyone would waste their time with poor Africans who won't ever amount to anything. That's what you believe, isn't it? See, if you really thought it was about culture, it would make sense to provide education where it was needed most, since education is perhaps the best way to overcome deficiencies in the culture.

          Zuckerberg and Gates could invest more in America, but they don't owe it to

          • by Zeio ( 325157 )

            "that a dollar will go a lot father in impoverished countries than USA"

            No. You cant buy efficacy in corrupt places the money and goods are generally stolen by local power brokers.

            You could do time and volunteer on foreign places, but neither YOU nor Gates would do anything like that.

            Race card, gotta love it. What a sad little brown shirt for identity politics.

  • After all, they've done such a bang-up job on education here!

  • Bridge's founders are challenging the long-held assumption that governments rather than companies should lead mass education programs.

    It is political and cultural suicide to surrender control of education to outside forces.

    There is always a reaction --- slow in coming perhaps ---- but poisonous when it takes full form. You only have to look at the history of OLPC and Common Core in the states to see the truth in that.

    It's telling as well, I think, that where the Bridge Academies post its Awards [bridgeinte...demies.com], they are all for entrepreneurship, not education.

  • Is mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article although his book, and what he found in the poorest, third-word slums, wasn't. What he found was tiny, ramshackle private schools just about everywhere. Dr. Tooley's book "The Beautiful Tree" covers the phenomenon and how widely-spread it is.

    Seems poor people, when the government schools are lousy enough, or non-existant, simply set up their own schools. Whoever has the entreprenuerial grit and enough education to convince very poor parents they might be able

  • "Am in Redmond this week. Wanted to catch up with you, You might be aware of the work Bric team is doing on the proactive EDGI like proposal. Given the impact of Education market in India globally for us and the threats from Linux and piracy, I want to make this a big bet plan in India (post Novell – Sco and Trishul) ref [edge-op.org].

    "EDGI is a customer-focused program that is for circumstances (like the one you reference) where an education and/or government customer is going to purchase naked PC’S or PC

The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker

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