[Foundation-l] Re: Languages and education

[Mark Horner]

Hi everyone

I would like to add a little to this discussion.

I am from South Africa, which is one of the African 
countries in better shape, though things are not 
completely rosey.

Africa, in general, is in a bad way (really bad 
depending on where you look, Darfur, Congo, Liberia,
etc.) but I think that for once there is really a glimmer
of hope. For the first time African's have been trying,
I'll admit success is still way off, to solve Africa's 
problems. Its not possible to do it alone but the mindset
has finally changed. I am prepared to discuss this at length but
its not the purpose of my email - I just want to set a scene.

In Southern Africa there is peace for the first time. Angola's 
civil war very recently ended, Namibia is peaceful, Botswana has no
prospects of war, Mozambique fought itself to a standstill and now
there is peace (peace != schools, money, infrastructure etc.), Swaziland
and Lesotho are also peaceful and so is South Africa. Zimbabwe has
some issues but largely Southern Africa is stable and so now is the
prime opportunity to lay a foundation for lasting peace which will hopefully
spread north.

How does this tie in with your discussion, well I feel that a key
area for solid peace is to stimulate education - Africa needs teachers,
doctors, engineers, nurses etc. and the best thing for Africa is that
they come from Africa and not be visitors as part of an international
aid program (I think that aid is very necessary but its just not a sustainable
solution).

So languages and education - well an organisation like wikimedia can help 
a stack with education. No computers in rural villages I agree but I have shown
that (http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst) science textbooks can be reduced in cost
by an order of magnitude. This can only help stretch those limited education
budgets in Africa much further. The content we have written as part of FHSST 
will be migrated into WikiBooks very soon - I am working on it but Latex2Wiki 
isn't the simplest mapping I've ever seen.

Due to the colonies that once existed free textbooks in English, French and Portuguese
could make a huge impact across Africa. If they are cheap (we estimate $3 per copy of 
our Physics book - hard colour cover and bound) then its easier to distribute
them, raise enough money and save money for training of teachers and other resources.

WikiBooks and its large user base could very quickly help to produce such texts which
could really make a difference ( I would start in Southern Africa where things are more stable
and then move North). 

And we are workign from the inside - we are an organisation within AFrica
releasing books - its not a case of Europeans rocking up (again ;) and telling
everyone how its supposed to be done.

Just my 2 cents worth (well maybe a bit more).

Cheers,

Mark



>/ Anthere wrote:
/>/
/>>/ (...)
/>>/
/>>/ all asked for books. Only books. Not
/>>/ food, nor money, nor sweets, only books. And they
/>>/ wanted books in french language. I told them "but you
/>>/ can't read french". But this is what they wanted
/>>/ nevertheless.
/>>/
/>>/ (...)
/>>/
/>>/ Computers in these villages is out of question. They
/>>/ have electricity but I doubt a computer could survive
/>>/ long in such an environment (I spent two hours in the
/>>/ local gendarmerie, they have desks, paper, pens and
/>>/ sand). However, most of our youngest guides had an
/>>/ email adress and went on the net thanks to cybercafes
/>>/ in Tamanrasset.
/>>/
/>>/ There might be things to do no ?
/
On 5 Jan 2005, at 14:58, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>/ This is absolutely fascinating to me.  Just really fascinating.
/>/
/>/ I think this is the kind of knowledge we have to have, knowledge of
/>/ real conditions in real places, in order to be able to help
/>/ effectively.
/>/
/>/ --Jimbo
/
Seconded.

Caution may be advised however:
If, say, we get something going and distribute books ''from France'', 
this could easily be seen by local (Algerian) politicians/nationalists 
as "some French-American organization is trying to subvert our 
education system by hijacking our children's literacy development." 
Very bad mojo/karma/blood. Yes, I agree with Anthere's (implied) 
suggestions, but if we even try to do something, we should be very 
diplomatic about it and thread very carefully. Make sure our 
non-affiliation and charitable nature is very much known and possibly 
involve the (Algerian) national through local government and/or kindly 
ask them for advice or even permission. Make sure our attitude does NOT 
get to be: "What a crappy country and f*&ked-up government/education 
system. Heck, we can do this SO much better." And make sure local (ie. 
Algerian) people KNOW that that's not our attitude. Just asking people 
nicely and showing them that we fully respect them will often work 
wonders. And make sure that they know that they can become Wikipedians, 
too.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


-- 
--
Mark Horner                                                                                                         
Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn                                                               

Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

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