Evidence from the One Laptop per Child program in rural Peru
112 comments
·December 7, 2025martey
bawolff
While that's undoubtedly true, is that really feasible?
Training programs are expensive, and i imagine difficult to conduct across potentially remote areas with underdeveloped infrastructure.
Internet access is maybe more doable now with starlink, but how practical was it at the time? I imagine this varries significantly with region, maybe in some cases all that was needed was LTE modem -> wifi, but if actually new infrastructure needed to be set up, that could be very pricey very fast.
Like everything its all about trade offs, if olpc did those things would they have budget for other things?
em-bee
the only way to improve education is to train more and better teachers. that's even completely independent of projects like OLPC. asking if training teachers is feasible is simply the wrong question. arguing that it is expensive is the wrong argument.
education and teacher training is the only way to achieve progress in this world. and if training is expensive or difficult to achieve then that's a challenge we need to overcome, not an excuse not to do it.
zozbot234
There are viable alternatives to Internet access, notably offline resources as provided by projects such as Kiwix. I'm not sure to what extent the projects described in OP actively leveraged these efforts with any real effectiveness. If it didn't, those OLPC mini-laptops would've been functionally equivalent to glorified calculators, and the results would be quite unsurprising.
alephnerd
> because the OLPC program had other benefits (increasing uptake of lower cost laptops worldwide, giving children computer skills, etc.)...
What does that matter if food insecurity, stunted growth, low quality K-6 schools, and other critical issues remain?
From a human capital development perspective, the amount of money spent per year on OLPC could have subsidized a number of similar programs that are both cheaper and have been documented to lead to better developmental indicators.
And it wasn't like OLPC actually placed educators to teach programming at the K-10 level in most of the target regions.
On top of that, broadband and internet penetration didn't expand until the 2010s with Asian commodity telecom equipment being mass produced and exported to developing markets - so what use was a computer which had no internet to a household that was almost always in the lowest income bracket in a developing country?!?
This is why evidence-based policymaking has become the norm and why Banerjee and Duflo won a Nobel Prize.
Edit: can't reply
You (most likely) grew up in a first world country and in the top 5% of households globally.
For the target communities for OLPC, much more basic needs like clean water, school access, nutrition access, and other services were either limited or functionally non-existent.
Much of rural Peru during OLPC (the 2000s) [0] had HDIs comparable to what Laos, Cambodia, and Bangladesh today.
More critically, Peru back then used to be more developed than China [0], yet China's HDI has now outpaced Peru developmentally because local government took an evidence-based approach to developmental policymaking thanks to guidance from Stanford's REAP group [1]
I'm sure you can recognize that the policies needed in a developing country are entirely different from those in a developed country.
[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/PER+CHN/?levels=1+...
cameronh90
The OLPC project clearly didn’t achieve its aims, but how would they have known that without trying?
More recently, the impact of smart phones on the developing world has been transformational, suggesting some of the ideas behind OLPC may have been good, but the specific implementation lacking. Thanks to smart phones, developing communities now have access to media in global languages, online education, finance, communication, markets (without having to travel for miles), disaster recovery, health resources and much more.
You can even now see rural villages themselves prioritise phone infrastructure over many things that on the surface seem more important - such as by fixing the phone charger before they fix the plumbing!
Spooky23
Why should I have gone to college?
My outcomes would be better if I were just richer, smarter and better looking.
readthenotes1
There's a real doubt whether college is a reasonable investment these days. The costs are outrageous and the improvement, for society, seems lacking.
If you want to be richer, smarter, and be better looking, food and shelter security might go a long ways
aserr
There’s a book, The Charisma Machine (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537445/the-charisma-machine/), that examines outcomes from multiple OLPC initiatives and covers many of the failings.
bigthymer
A youtube talk about the book for the lazy\busy
ChrisArchitect
Some of the more recent lookbacks with anecdotes and takes:
The Charisma Machine: The life, death, and legacy of One Laptop per Child (2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29971982
OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world (2018)
bawolff
I think the (overly utopian and unrealistic) ideological basis was not that students would neccesarily do better in traditional learning environments, but that they would become better self-learners and be able to teach themselves things that are relavent to their own needs which may differ from the official curriculum.
I doubt that happened, but i don't think this study would capture that if it did.
hamdingers
OLPC may not have helped many rural children directly, but it did inspire an entire class of computers (netbooks/chromebooks) that made computing more accessible for children and adults across the world. For that reason, I think it was a worthwhile pursuit.
ghaff
Netbooks were largely a passing fad as were Chromebooks in large part, though the latter are still around to some degree. However, OLPC went beyond cheap laptops and, however well-intentioned, never really took off as a unique entity.
avhon1
Chromebooks are ubiquitous in U.S. primary and secondary schools
sien
From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Sales_and_marketing
"In 2020, Chromebooks outsold Apple Macs for the first time by taking market share from laptops running Microsoft Windows. This rise is attributed to the platform's success in the education market.[79][80][81]"
Hmm.
This is interesting. Searches give you different numbers.
But it looks like the number of Chromebooks sold each year is comparable, but probably lower than the number of Macs.
rr808
2020 was a special time where every child in America was given a Chromebook so they could do school from home.
ghaff
They've become the browser-centric portal for the education market which is the only thing a lot of people need/want. (I probably prefer that to defaulting to tablets/smartphones.)
At the same time, as far as I can tell, Chromebooks are pretty much all K-12 focused devices at this point. Which is fine. But I'd potentially buy something higher-end if it were available. But it isn't.
zozbot234
Small laptop computers are ergonomically useful to children who literally have a smaller body frame. I don't think there were many of those around prior to OLPC and/or netbooks, beyond specialty products like the Toshiba Libretto and perhaps the original Psion Netbook. Nowadays we still have low-end smaller ultrabooks that are effectively quite comparable to the former netbooks.
ghaff
And I don't think there's much available today. I used to have a small Asus for travel (and a small windows Fujitsu before that). But there are very few <13" laptops/Chromebooks available these days.
underlipton
I believe there were many in Japan - including products like small laptop-shaped electronic dictionaries - but that's Japan. Their homegrown cell phones have recently picked up the moniker "Galapagos phones" because they tended to develop country-specific features and rarely leave to other markets. The same can be said for their micro/portable laptops of the early 2000s.
One could argue that OLPC made people outside of Japan aware that the form factor was possible and even optimal for some users.
diziet
An unfortunate yet unsurprising report to those familiar with the literature on cognitive ability. I too donated to similar programs. I hope better computer skills make some sort of earning impact, though the prevalence of smart phones probably makes a bigger difference.
torginus
I'm surprised about how popular these racist explanations about why the program failed, and not exploring the fact that the hardware, software and training for teachers might have been lacking
If they were good at what they set out to do, the program would've been successful and desired in Western countries (perhaps with upgraded models). But it wasn't.
I'd say the lack of ability to self-reflect on the shortcomings of the HW/SW/Infra and the willingness of the program's creators to embrace such explanations is much more telling about the probable cause of failure.
I'm sure most of these supposedly cognitively inferior Peruvian kids are on their laptops right now, playing League or Overwatch, with most of them having smartphones.
In broader strokes, and with the benefit of hindsight, I think the story of Africa is worth exploring, after a century of Western selfless efforts of trying to civilize and develop the continent, very little progress has been made. Then the Chinese moved in with far less noble intentions and a profit motive, and succeeded beyond imagination at civilization-building.
lurk2
> An unfortunate yet unsurprising report to those familiar with the literature on cognitive ability.
The conclusion of that literature being…?
texasthistle
[flagged]
mmooss
> Cognitive ability is largely biological/genetic and can't be "trained up" so to speak
Would you share evidence? How are you defining 'cognitive ability'?
The idea that cognitive ability doesn't benefit from education is unbelievable - the opposite of experience and of what I understand.
literalAardvark
Education helps channel cognitive ability into useful pathways, but you either have something to channel or don't.
Though I'd go with innate over genetic: leaves more room for nurture and epigenetics and doesn't make one sound like a white supremacist.
tbrownaw
This disagreement sounds like what I've heard about fluid intelligence vs crystallized intelligence.
anonymousiam
Sad if true. I was a donor, and the program had good intentions.
Arrowmaster
At least now instead of just theory we have one study of the results and a data point to use in the next attempt at a similar project. The idea is probably still solid and could be attempted again but with a more refined implementation.
embedding-shape
I don't think you'll find a deeper study than this. And not everything was bad, at least one benefit was "significantly improved students’ computer skills" which may help them get employed in the future, the study focused mostly of academia but there is a whole world outside of academia :)
true2octave
AI will have similar effect in general population
No significant effect except in the minority who have the drive and capabilities to leverage new technology to achieve their goals
There is always a bias on the effects of new technology because the early adopters are already highly capable people
freeopinion
AI has very clearly disincentivized learning. I don't think OLPC can be accused of that.
torginus
I constantly use ChatGPT to learn new things, both in terms of software engineering and more general knowledge.
I've learned a ton of new things from ChatGPT, some which might even be right.
lurk2
> Following schools over time, we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression.
lathiat
I still have one of the early green OLPC laptops kicking around that I got at linux.conf.au 2005, in part because they were (or were thinking of) making use of avahi as part of the mesh stuff. They are quite fun to look at.
The project was quite interesting and exciting, and I really miss the era of custom linux desktops, phones, tablets etc being viable projects, it's a shame the project never really directly worked out.
zozbot234
Linux-based phones and tablets are more viable than ever, though. We even have entirely new device classes today, such as e-paper devices that may turn out to be especially useful in an educational context.
cbsmith
I think the interesting thing is they saw significant improvement in computer skills, but no significant improvement in academic performance. It suggests to me that the academic program, or at least the measures from it, didn't factor in computer skills, which seems a mistake given their relevance.
hereme888
If raw cognitive skills didn't improve, but productivity improved due to improved digital skills, then that's a national-level win.
ChrisArchitect
A similar NPR report from 2012:
One Child, One Laptop ... And Mixed Results In Peru
https://www.npr.org/2012/10/13/162719126/one-child-one-lapto...
rowanG077
I'm not sure why people here call it a failure. The children who got a laptop have reached superior skill in using computers, while it seems like not sacrificing any other capability. That seems like a great result, skilled computer use is a highly valuable skill.
marcosdumay
Yes, it was a clear success. It not only did they improve the education of several children and gathered valuable information on how we can try it better next time, they also scared an oligopolistic industry into diversifying their products and supplying several needs that were ignored.
That said, OLPC was extremely ambitious. I don't think they achieved any of the project's objectives. They get a lot of criticism because of that, and it's all ridiculously unfair.
rayiner
Many people thought that giving kids computers would make the smarter and more generally educated, not just give them better skills with computers.
marcosdumay
Many people though that giving kids entire new ways to access knowledge and cooperate on their projects would make them smarter and more generally educated.
And honestly, if you think that's stupid, I'm not really interested on whatever else you think on the subject. It happened to not work for several reasons, some of them mistakes from the OLPC project, but insisting it's an inevitable result is just uninformed blabber.
lurk2
The level of technical aptitude the average westerner has just by proxy of being surrounded by electronics is one of those things like running water that gets taken completely for granted. Even a lifelong ditch digger is going to benefit from learning how to send and receive email, and in 2005 it was not a given that he would have.
alephnerd
The tens of millions per year spent on OLPC could have been better applied to programs that have demonstrated tangible positive impact on human capital development in developing countries, such as free meal programs [0], early childhood developmental screening [1], and other evidence-based policies.
Heck, most policymakers in LDCs panned the program at the time as well not actually prioritizing the aid that was needed [2]
[0] - https://econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Bonds.pdf
[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5859813/
[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20170210165101/http://edition.cn...
mmooss
Those effective strategies were developed through the same method of research and development as OLPC. At one point, we didn't know about those benefits; should we have not experimented with those strategies?
The nature of research is that some things succeed/fail to different degrees than others, and some that have not sufficiently succeeded will in the future, or will inform other successes. If we already knew the answers, it wouldn't be research.
alephnerd
The issue was there was no robust quantitative research done before OLPC was created.
The programs I gave as examples above all had previously been tested in control groups via RCT before they were rolled out en masse. On top of that, these initiatives were done in coordination with local stakeholders.
This is why JPAL@MIT [0] (Banerjee, Duflo) and REAP@Stanford [1] (Liu, Wang, Rozelle) have had significant success in helping raise HDIs in the states in India and China respectively that they worked with.
On top of that, OLPC (and similar initiatives) took a significant amount of oxygen from the philanthropy ecosystem, with programs and initiatives that had a better strike rate being looked over simply because "it's Negreponte". Even Negreponte's MIT Media Lab largely failed from an outcomes perspective, and was buoyed becuase of donor relations.
lurk2
> Heck, most policymakers in LDCs panned the program at the time as well not actually prioritizing the aid that was needed [2]
I don’t have any insight as to what sort of aid would have been more effective, but quite frankly some of the criticisms were ridiculous when you consider the majority of people in these countries had a cheap mobile phone in their pocket a decade later.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/10/09/majorities-in-...
alephnerd
A smartphone allows you to both use the Internet and make calls.
OLPC only let you use a computer without internet in a number of areas where broadband and cellphone penetration was nonexistent until the 2010s expansion because of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indian commodity telecom infra.
jazzyjackson
Bit like the argument that we shouldn't have gone to the moon
tvshtr
Not a bit like, exactly like. It's a false dichotomy.
fragmede
That has an Effective Altruism feel to it though, which is unfortunately tainted due to SBF's involvement and other drama surrounding it.
crooked-v
A lot of people seem to have thought the progression would be "1. Give computers; 2. ???; 3. Better at everything".
jazzyjackson
Inspired by the computer in the wall in 1999 Sugata Mitra in which yes, just having a computer exist as a local curiosity lead to kids teaching themselves
https://waack.org/2010/04/27/put-more-computers-outside-the-...
https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_kids_can_teach_themse...
A lot of comments here seem to suggest that we should discount or ignore this paper because the OLPC program had other benefits (increasing uptake of lower cost laptops worldwide, giving children computer skills, etc.). This is a reasonable argument assuming that most people have only read the free abstract, but this isn't the conclusion that the authors come in the actual paper. Instead, they suggest that the program might have been more successful with increased teacher training and internet access in schools.
I was able to access the NBER version of the paper, but it looks like working copies are also available in a number of other locations: