An Uruguayan Brand of Revolution

Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez's first computer had a hand crank. The Swedish-made Facit calculator, a 13-pound device he used while working for a wholesaler in the 1960s, was heavy, unforgiving, and with its various keys, levers and pointers, not very user-friendly.

So it's not surprising that Vazquez shows an almost childlike joy in talking about "the jewel" of his administration: his plan to put a laptop computer into the hands of every Uruguayan child.

Some 360,000 public school students in Uruguay now have an XO computer, a serviceable and inexpensive laptop developed by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the nonprofit organization One Laptop per Child. Ninety-eight percent of those students have Internet access, mostly high-speed and wireless.

Through the Basic Information Educational Program for Online Learning, more commonly known by its Spanish acronym, CEIBAL, Uruguay has achieved in two years what not long ago seemed unimaginable: Today, a poor child in that country is just as likely to own a computer as a wealthy one.

Such progress has helped combat the inequality that plagues Uruguay, albeit much less than other parts of Latin America. In an interview, Vazquez explained that poor children who, before, "didn't even have an idea of how to open a computer," now have access not only to computers but also to the Internet, which opens up windows of opportunity that, not long ago, were available only to the well-off.

According to Miguel Brechner, president of the Technological Laboratories of Uruguay, the institution spearheading the effort, preliminary evaluations of CEIBAL suggest that students in the program are now more motivated to learn. Classroom participation is up, as well as school attendance. (On average, one in every two Latin American students does not finish ninth grade. Among the poor, the number is three out of four.)

Since its inception, CEIBAL has cost Uruguay $95 million, or .02 percent of the country's gross domestic product. During his five-year term, due to end next March, Vazquez has tripled Uruguay's education budget, raising it to 4.5 percent of GDP. The average in all of Latin America is 4 percent.

This relatively high investment throughout the region reflects efforts in recent years to improve education and other opportunities for the poor. Marcelo Cabrol, head of the Education Division of the Inter-American Development Bank, or IDB, points out that to help the poorest children, the region has "tried to improve the curriculum, to improve the teachers, to improve access to textbooks and infrastructure."

Meanwhile, East Asian countries spend, on average, 3 percent of GDP on education -- yet children there score much higher on international academic tests than those from Latin America. That raises the question of where to put the money next.

Many other countries in Latin America are jumping on the one-computer-per-child bandwagon. Cabrol says that the region is ahead of the world in introducing computers into the classroom, and he calculates that in three to four years some 30 million Latin American children will have their own personal devices.

This kind of initiative helps bridge the digital divide, but as Brechner put it, the question now is whether -- and how -- the program can help narrow the "knowledge divide."

In theory, computers facilitate both face-to-face teaching and distance learning via the Internet. This gives children who live in poorer school districts, or who don't have the best teachers, access to better education. Computers also allow for a more personalized style of teaching that caters to the specific needs or strengths of each child.

In practice, results so far have been mixed. Countries that have put computers in classrooms have seen students improve in some subjects but not others. Programs have also suffered when teachers failed to effectively incorporate computers into the curriculum, falling back on more traditional methods of teaching while the computers sat idle.

CEIBAL plans to address some of these issues in its next phase. Already, some 20,000 teachers have received their own computers and training on how to operate them. And with technical and financial assistance from the IDB, CEIBAL hopes to provide additional teacher training and create a system to monitor students' progress.

Time will tell if the initiative can make a lasting impact. But for now, even private schools in Uruguay want to get in on the action: Many have expressed interest in joining the CEIBAL network -- and will buy the XO laptops with their own funds.

CEIBAL's widespread appeal across socioeconomic lines is an interesting development for Vazquez, who came to power as part of the left-of-center wave of presidents elected in Latin America over the past decade. Unlike other leftist leaders in the region, Vazquez seems to relish the response of his nation's elite.

As he likes to point out, the revolution he introduced into Uruguayan society is neither "anachronistic nor reckless," but, rather, one that has earned the support of society as a whole.