International News – Leaders of the New School

Latin American may be lagging behind in many areas, but one thing it does have is a fresh take on education.

Free after-school programs and the opportunity to learn foreign languages may be pretty common in the U.S., but not so in parts of Latin America – until now, thanks to a wave of education reforms sweeping the region.

The changes couldn’t be more needed. The average Latin American only earns about a fifth-grade education. In Honduras and Nicaragua, one in five people can’t read. Even in Brazil, the region’s otherwise big success story, fewer than one in 10 people graduate college. Not surprisingly, experts say the number one problem holding back out “países” is a week school system.

Here is an example of just one of the many initiatives improving millions of children’s lives.

Last year, Uruguay became the first country in the world besides the tiny South Pacific island of Niue – to give every elementary public school student a free laptop. Pupils (380,000) use their little green-and-white computers daily at school, then tote them home to work on their “tareas.”

Launched by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, the program called One Laptop per Child, costs only about $260 per student, which in total adds up to less than five percent of the nation’s total education budget.

Still, not everyone is convinced. Half of families surveyed worried the computers expose their children to bad influences. Plus, despite installing miles of new Internet cables, Uruguay’s connectivity is still spotty. But in a country where most adults have never used e-mail, this is progress that can’t be denied.

Source: Castillo, Franziska. “Leaders of the New School.” Latina. January/February (2010): 36.