[Foundation-l] Re: Languages and education

[Anthere]

Well, this is all really interesting. This is exactly what we need.I looked at your website, and quickly at two of the books, and I was really impressed.
I was impressed by the amount of work by a relative little number of people... but I also thought of one of our french editor, a retiree, currently importing the entirety of his courses on "tribologie" (lubricants) in wikipedia/wikibooks.
 
We indeed may have a huge amount of knowledge in the encyclopedia, but to do textbooks, we need to stick to the local curriculum, and this can basically only be done by a local teacher/professor (local is related to nation in my mind :)). They exactly know how to organise the book and which content to fit in.
 
And this is precisely what you are doing...
 
I would like to know more about how your organisation intends to finance these books, and MOSTLY what you can foresee in terms of distribution.
 
Are you on irc so that we can discuss this real time ?
 
Anthere
 
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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



		
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