Shajara

Earlier this week, I got an Amazon Kindle. In short: I love it. I won’t spare too many words singing the Kindle’s praises (mainly because they’ve been sung many times before), but I will say that it’s crazy thin and light (about the width of a pencil and the weight of a paper-back), the screen is fantastic, and the idea of carrying around hundreds of books on the thing is wonderful. It reads just as well as a real book (thanks to the awesome e-ink screen), and in some situations it’s actually a big improvement over the classic, printed-page book design. If you like to read, you’ll love a Kindle. 

My mother will bemoan the loss of physical paper, the rich feel of a well bound hardcover, the proud display of books previously consumed. And, in many ways, she’s spot-on. I love the feeling of turning over the final page of a book, closing its worn cover, and placing its cracked spine on a crowded bookshelf. However, that those warm feelings aren’t what give books value. Rather, it’s the ideas held within the covers that give a book its worth. By wrapping those valuable ideas in an expensive paper cover, we keep them out of the potential hands of many, many people who deserve access as well. 

And that is why the Kindle, or, rather, the e-reader in general, excites me. In it, I see an opportunity to spread the world’s mass of literature beyond the developed West. And that is incredibly exciting. 

Harding Academy, the elementary school I went to as a kid, has a pretty sizable library collection for a K-8 institution, currently at roughly 18,000 books. However, one Kindle can store about 3,500 books, meaning that the entire Harding library could be replaced with just five e-readers. 

Of course, that would be utterly impractical - the value of Harding’s (or anyone’s) library is that it can be accessed by many children, not just five. But I’m not thinking about using e-readers in the (relatively) wealthy schools of the West, at least en masse. I’m thinking about places that have historically had little access to literature, of schools that don’t have a library at all, let alone the 18,000 volumes Harding Academy boasts. 

Think about a rural Kenyan village, much like the one we visited in Taita last month. That community has at least four schools (that I counted) of different age levels, public and private, and of the two that I visited, neither have a library. Students are often made to share textbooks, leading to a situation where memorization, not comprehension, is the goal. This is not meant to be a damning of the Kenyan school system, but, rather, simply an acknowledgment of a saddening status quo. Certainly there are communities and countries in Africa and on other continents (including our own) where the situation is much worse. 

Now, imagine a community like that receiving twenty e-readers (customized, of course, to fit the environment) packed to the gills with everything from Shakespeare to Dr. Seuss (translated if necessary). Imagine the impact on not just the school, but the whole community, who would then have access to the world’s greatest minds and the wonderful ideas they created. In reverse, imagine your childhood without abundant access to books, and think of the possibilities here. 

Of course, there are many logistical questions that have to be answered before the dream can become a reality on a large scale. Twenty e-readers may be a big enough quantity for one class, but sharing those among a whole student population (or a whole community) would get tricky. Figuring out the best way to distribute the devices is a hurdle as well (I’m in favor of selling things like this to communities instead of just donating them - the act of buying something is a subtly empowering one, and by setting aside resources to purchase devices, a community would confirm an actual need for the solution). Working out licensing for all the books would take legwork as well (and likely serious donations from publishers). Also, the current hardware cost is prohibitive - the screen of a Kindle, the component that makes it so much like reading a real book, even in the sun, costs $60 on its own. 

The cost issues will likely be alleviated over time (and can also be mitigated with a clever subsidy-based business plan - think TOMS shoes, but less ineffective), which may also help with the quantity issue. Luckily, there are already plenty of smart people working in this field (check out the OLPC project at http://laptop.org, it’s pretty cool), which is very encouraging. 

This particular idea may be flawed (though I personally think it’s OK), but my point is this: it’s pretty easy to go to a Best Buy or an Apple Store today and only see electronics that can amuse the wealthy. However, the technologies that power the Kindle, the iPad, and the like are applicable outside of the West. There’s a vast market of people out there who want and deserve the hope of a better life, and we as a global community need to get creative if we are to help them achieve just that. 

I can’t think of a much better place to start than in education.