This is not exactly a polished paper. I just wrote it up quickly after I gave the talk at the “Solutions for a shrinking planet” conference. It is better to read it together with the powerpoint slides.
Digital Divide: Real or Artificial? Cause or Symptom?
Dale Wen, Ph.D.
The term “digital divide” is used to describe the gap that exists between those who have and those who do not have access to modern communication technology (telephones, computers, Internet etc.) and related services. Some experts have attributed it as one major reason why people in developing countries and the underprivileged in developed countries cannot fully reap the benefits of globalized economy. “Narrowing the digital gap” has been a major theme in many poverty alleviation development projects promoted by institutions like UN and World Bank. As a US educated engineer working in Silicon Valley, I naturally agreed with such ideas. Yet, my views started to shift once I am confronted with the reality of rural education.
During last five years, I have volunteered with several grassroots NGOs engaged in China’s rural education. Their programs include scholarship for poor kids, building of village level schools, libraries and computer labs for rural high schools. I’ve learned a lot during this process. Today I am going to focus on two major problems with China’s rural education:
Example 1: A father bought a cell phone instead of sending his kid to elementary school. ($300-$500 for the phone vs. $40/year tuition.).
Once a volunteer visited the family of a drop out kid. He found out that the family was indeed very poor—they lived in a rundown mud house, the father was almost blind because of untreated cataract. Yet, the father had a brand new cell phone on his belt. It costs $300-$500 to buy a cell phone while the annual tuition is around $40. By devoting all his money to bridge the digital gap, this farmer created a much bigger gap for his family.
Example 2: Expensive auditorium instead of scholarship for poor students.
This is a university auditorium where a group of volunteers including me delivered scholarship money. These students depend on $120 annual scholarship from a US foundation to continue college. Yet the auditorium was furnished with expensive looking wood and retrofitted with latest technical gadgets like Internet access. While sitting there, I could not help wondering: why cannot the school degrade the auditorium and use the money to create more scholarships for those poor kids?
Example 3: A model digital high school in Hunan.
This is a model digital high school in a poor county in Hunan province. The renovation cost $10 million, while the annual educational budget for the whole county is only around $1 million. The school is now in heavy debt. The tuition hiked from $120 to $600, about 5 times of local annual cash income, making it prohibitively expensive for the local population they are supposed to serve.
Example 4: Government mandate.
In Jiangsu province, all high schools are required by government mandate to have at least 1/3 classrooms computerized. Cost of one computer might be cheap here, but it is about or even more than the annual salary of an entry level teacher. Many computers purchased under this mandate are sitting idle due to lack of technical support. Meanwhile typical class size is 50-60 students, it can reach as high as 90 in some under-funded schools.
Example 5: Investment bias by international development agencies.
Initially I tended to dismiss such events as isolated incidents and blame them on some misinformed farmers or corrupted government officials with personal agendas. But as I see more and more such examples ranging from personal, local, to national or even international levels, it becomes harder and harder to dismiss them.
This photo shows an empty highway in western Gansu province, financed by World Bank. International development agencies like World Bank, Asia Development Bank are pouring billions and billions of dollar for infrastructure building—big dams, highways, information superhighways etc. Yet, women organizers told me that it is difficult for them to get small grants (tens of thousands $) to put all girls into school or educate illiterate women. There are still 60 million illiterate women in China. And it only costs $35 to teach an illiterate woman how to read and write, and other basic skills to benefit her and her family. According to a research done by World Bank researcher Lawrence Summers, women’s education is one of the most effective ways to combat poverty. He estimated the annual return to be around 20%, much higher than the return of many big infrastructure projects. Yet, World Bank’s investment priority is not aligned with their own research finding.
Information delivered by the education system is not
helpful for rural development.
Now I am going to talk about the second problem: Information delivered by the education system is often not helpful for rural development.
First let me show you what is taught and being tested now.
Here are two questions from 2002 college entrance exam:
1. Frankfurt is Germany’s
A.Most populated city
B.Biggest harbor city
C.Biggest airport hub
D.Biggest high-tech center
2. Which of the following countries belong to the European Union, is next to North sea and Baltic sea, and is not using Euro?
A. Sweden B. Germany C. Denmark D. Poland
They are about trivial facts regarding European cities and countries. After reading these, even my European friends were wondering: why does anyone need to memorize these things?
Another example, once I reviewed a dozen textbooks for the newly established high school computer classes. All these textbooks are step-by-step instructions about how to use certain software, often obscure brand, probably selected by book editors for personal preference or financial interest. Thank God, there were no computer classes when I went to high school.
On the other hand, many valuable things are not taught in school. For example, once a volunteer asked 4 students: “how many chickens or ducks do your family have?” Only one student could give an accurate answer, among the other three, 2 even did not know whether their parents kept chickens or ducks at all. This shows the big detachment between school learning and community life.
Another example, this picture shows a model of biogas chambers. This technology can be highly beneficial for many rural households: a family unit costs $400 to construct, and it can generates $40 worth of fuel plus $80 worth of organic fertilizer annually. Yet, such appropriate technologies are not taught in normal high schools.
Several years ago, I had an interesting conversation with my grandmother, an illiterate woman in her 80s. We were talking about the increasing and ever bigger floods in the region. She said: “ When I was young, the elders always say—if you cut down too many trees, the mountain gods would be angry and give you floods. Then the educated ones claimed that it is stupid superstition. Now it seems that the elders are right after all.” I agree with her. Traditional knowledge and wisdom like this are being actively wiped out by the education system. So many times I am shattered by the poverty I see, not lack of material wealth, but more poverty of the mind. I see more hope when I meet people from the more isolated, more “backwards” minority areas, as they are able to keep more of ingenious culture alive. For example, many Tibetans still keep their “holy mountain, holy lake” concept and other indigenous knowledge accumulated over generations. They could have a better chance for long-term sustainability if we don’t destroy their culture and self-confidence by our well-intentioned effort to help them “modernize”.
I believe the fundamental problem is that most educational materials imply that the only way to a better life is to industrialize, to modernize. Rural kids are bombarded with thousands of articles telling them that everything urban is progressive and desirable, while everything rural is backwards and despicable. In my observation, many 11,12 year olds still have enough common sense to laugh at such articles, even if they cannot quite articulate their own viewpoints. But by the time they finish college, the brainwash is done, almost all of them lost the magic power to laugh at the follies of city folks. Such bias would not be so bad if the underline assumption can hold. But, can western industrialization process by copied by populated countries like India and China? Is western life style scalable and sustainable? The answer is a big NO because of resource and environment limit.
Let’s look at some data from 2002 “Living Planet Report” by WWF, UNEP and Redefining Progress.
|
1999 data |
Population (millions) |
Biocapacity (global ha/person) |
Ecological
footprint (global ha/person) |
Overuse(%) |
|
World |
5979.7 |
1.90 |
2.28 |
20% |
|
High income countries |
906.5 |
3.55 |
6.48 |
83% |
|
Middle income countries |
2941.0 |
1.89 |
1.99 |
5.3% |
|
Low income countries |
2114.2 |
0.95 |
0.83 |
-13% |
|
USA |
280.4 |
5.27 |
9.70 |
84% |
|
China |
1272.0 |
1.04 |
1.54 |
48% |
This table shows the biocapacity and ecological footprint of various countries. Low income countries and middle income countries have a huge population problem; they really need to address this problem to improve living standard and achieve sustainability. But for overuse of resources, high income countries are far worse offenders despite a far smaller population. In absolute numbers instead of percentage, the resource rich and technical advanced US is the worst. If populated countries like China blindly copy the US model, it is a sure way of quick self-destruction. Many speakers in this conference already speak that we really need human ingenuity to solve the global challenge of sustainable; I just want to remind you that besides technical ingenuity, we also need cultural ingenuity, ingenuity from a different perspective. An education system solely based on the single perspective of technical society is not helpful to cultivate such ingenuity.
In conclusion, I believe “digital divide” is just a symptom instead of root cause. Gaining access to quality information is a real challenge for many poor people in developing countries. The real bottleneck lies in human and cultural factors: lack of basic read and write skills, lack of critical thinking abilities to distinguish information and misinformation, and lack of quality information based on local/traditional knowledge and perspectives, etc. In order to narrow the “information divide”, we need to address all these issues instead of only focusing on “digital” or “technical” aspect of things. By focusing on technology only, resources may be diverted from more important things like women’s education; by neglecting the content, better technology would only help spread bias and misinformation more effectively, instead of teaching people what they really need.
This talk is mostly based on my personal experience and anecdote evidence, as it is highly subjective to determine what is useful information. I hope it will provoke you to ask your own questions, and seek your own answers.