For many developing countries, where the governments may be concerned with providing basic necessities, like food, health care and adequate sanitation, do children really need laptop computers?

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop per Child association, says the answer is, yes. “If a child is starving and a child has a disease, etc., etc., giving kids in the developing world laptops, especially at $100 is not really what we should be doing. And that criticism, which is more frequent than you could imagine, is completely eliminated when you ask somebody, ‘please just substitute the word ‘education’ for ‘laptop’.  And nobody would ever say that.”

He says education is a vital issue in all cultures, and that the most important contribution laptop computers can make toward education is by replacing ink and paper books with an electronic version. He says he has made this argument with many education ministers.

“It’s just a book. It’s just an electronic book. And the economics of textbooks could justify the whole thing. And then at night the kids come out and use it as a laptop.”

生词

adequate  adj. 足够的，合格的，合乎需求的

sanitation  n. 卫生设备，卫生设施体系

laptop  n. 膝上型计算机，便携式电脑

substitute……for……  用……代替，取代

翻译

许多发展中国家政府可能关注的只是为孩子们提供诸如食物、保健服务以及符合需求的卫生设施这类的基础必需品，那里的孩子们真的需要笔记本电脑吗？

作为“每个儿童一台笔记本电脑”协会的创始人，尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝表示，答案是肯定的。“当一个孩子还在饱受饥饿、疾病等等所带来的痛苦时，为发展中国家的孩子们提供笔记本电脑，特别是这些电脑的价位还在100美元，这不是我们真正该做的事情。这样的批评来得远比你想象的要频繁，但是当你在请某人把“笔记本电脑”这个词换成“教育”时，批评之声就完全消失了，谁都不会再说那样的话了。”

他表示，教育在任何文化中都是一个至关重要的课题，而笔记本电脑对教育所做出的最大贡献就是用电子版代替了油墨印刷的纸质书本。他还表示，他已经就这一观点与多位教育部长进行了讨论。

“它只是一本书，只是一本电子书。这个教材的经济意义可以证明一切。而当孩子们在晚上走到户外时则可以把它当作笔记本来使用。”

posted on 2006-11-17 01:35 annika 阅读(1927) 评论(10)  编辑  收藏 所属分类: 标准VOA 网摘收藏