For Low-Income Kids, Access to Devices Could Be the Equalizer | MindShift

For Low-Income Kids, Access to Devices Could Be the Equalizer | MindShift

While the race in the hardware industry is perhaps most notable amongst makers of devices such as mobile phones and tablets, a seemingly unforgotten reality remains a stark reality for many: the digital divide.

With ever smarter phones, and other 'always on' devices, the policies that govern state monopolies over broadband play a damning role for the poor who remains unconnected. This reality stared me in the face when I started to engage with my first cohort of Foundation Phase Teacher students who are part of a program to establish the first new university in South Africa since the establishment of a new democratic government in 1994. In South Africa we are faced with numerous problems and inefficiencies for various reasons. Apart from the usual political upheavals and concerns about the future of democracy in the country, none is so real as the digital divide. The cost of broadband is exceptionally high in South Africa, as compared to other developing countries. The use of mobile phones to access the myriad of online services across the Internet seems pivotal, especially for the poor. However, if access to mobile phones is a problem (especially students) then the absence of access to the Internet via any other means is catastrophic.

Children's Toys: Cultural and Societal (mis)representations

Toys are cultural representations and as such carry meaning beyond that which might have been intended by their designers. Or does it? Does a wooden steam engine have the same meaning to a Grade R child in England as it would for a child in a rural area half-way around the globe who has never seen any train before, let alone ride in a steam-driven one? What connection does an African child have with a white Barby doll? Similarly, what sense must a Westerner make of an intricately woven grass bowel or a hollowed out kalabash?

Watching a group of rural-based South African teachers unpacking a large consignment of toys that has been donated to them by the European Union became an experience and eye-opener. In many respects the thrill of receiving, unpacking, and opening the numerous boxes resembled the excitement when receiving presents on one's birthday.

However, as Grade R teachers in a rural area, these numerous toys do not necessarily connect with what they have been doing in their classes with the Grade R learners up until this point. Toy microwaves and play-play electric stoves don't necessarily have real-life equivalents for teachers and pupils' parents alike. Here cooking gets done over an open fire. Electric stoves are not to be played with. Microwave ovens are luxury goods for most. Some toys look a bit flimsy to me, given the sturdiness that is necessary for any manufactured product to survive in a rural African setting.

This beckons the question: how does one introduce toys into a new environment to a group of teachers and their learners to whom some of these toys as culturally-framed objects will pose a real 'first-time' encounter?

Just like the notorious  IT industry and the usual box-dumping in the name of 'upliftment and development', the gesture to bring 'aid' and 'assistance' to Foundation Phase education in a rural area by introducing toys from another part of the world might not have the desired outcomes. For a brief moment I notice the white doll with blue eyes laying in a cozy cot. I wonder who is going to play with her. The reason for my concern is simple: a proper understanding of the environment and culture to which these new things are being introduced seems lacking. Rapport, and a deep understanding of the intended recipients require time.

Time in Africa, especially in rural areas, have a completely different meaning than what people in clock-driven societies have of a 24 hour day. As I assisted unpacking, the "Made in China" on the boxes conjured images of scores of people sitting in long queues along an assembly line working at the speed of light. It is juxtaposed against my numerous observations from the area in which these new toys have find their way via the European Union: the leisurely pace of manual labour being performed by scores of women clearing the sides of the national road of overgrown grass and weeds (in a country like Germany one person will use one machine to maintain probably 100x as much), the goats that lazily cross a national road and all the cars that stop for them (accepting that no alternative exists, for example encampment or fences), children walking leisurely to school despite being late since its already after 08h00, the curbs of walkways that are in need of repair - and have been for years - but will probably remain like that, and of course, the grass that has already been growing for numerous seasons inside a roof's gutter. In fact, considering the architectural history of Africa, gutters are not an integral part of their culture. Does it mean that plastic toy microwave ovens too will have little meaning to the children that will now play with it? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Africa has a different rhythm that must be appreciated and respected, for attempts to introduce anything foreign that clashes with it will in all probability end in frustration, or be assimilated in ways unforeseen by the givers.