Evidence from the One Laptop per Child program in rural Peru

Overall impact and interpretation of the study

• Commenters highlight the core finding: strong gains in computer skills but no significant improvement in academic performance, with some evidence of worse grade progression.
• Some view this as a partial success: digital skills are valuable for employability and national productivity, especially as computers and phones permeate daily life.
• Others argue that this misses the program’s stated goals and that hoping “give computers → get better at everything” was always unrealistic without deeper pedagogical change.

Design, usability, and implementation issues

• The Sugar interface is widely criticized as an experimental, heavy, Python-based GUI that ran poorly on weak hardware and broke with familiar desktop paradigms, creating a barrier for both users and potential developers.
• Several argue that a standard lightweight Linux + common window manager would have enabled better performance and a larger ecosystem of existing software.
• Lack of teacher training and limited or absent internet access are repeatedly cited as critical missing pieces; without content, guidance, or connectivity, many devices were “glorified calculators.”

Context, opportunity cost, and evidence-based policy

• A strong thread emphasizes opportunity cost: tens of millions of dollars could have funded interventions with proven impact in similar settings (nutrition, school meals, early childhood programs, teacher development).
• Advocates of evidence-based development contrast OLPC’s rollout with programs tested via randomized controlled trials and co-designed with local stakeholders.
• Others defend OLPC as legitimate experimentation: failures generate knowledge, and earlier “effective” policies were also once untested.

Broader structural and ethical debates

• Some attribute disappointing results to deep structural problems in rural Peru—malnutrition, illness, weak schools, lack of connectivity—arguing laptops alone cannot overcome those.
• There is pushback against framing outcomes in terms of “cognitive ability” differences; this is called out as veering into racist explanations and ignoring program design flaws.

Legacy and indirect effects

• Many note OLPC’s influence on low-cost laptops, netbooks, and Chromebooks, and on pushing the industry toward cheaper, smaller devices, especially in education.
• Others downplay this, calling netbooks a fad and Chromebooks a niche, arguing that the real transformative device in developing countries has been the smartphone, not the OLPC laptop.