In that case, I suppose the most cost effective thing to do would be to airlift in some 1980s vintage textbooks that are written for a culture and in a language that they don't even understand.

In contrast to the ideologically loaded, feel-good aid offered by many charitable organizations, these projects are conducting research to tell us what is effective and gives the recipients more control over their future.

On effectiveness: we see a quantifiable increase in literacy rates over existing conditions. We also see faults (e.g. broken units) but those faults show us what needs to be fixed (e.g. more screen protection).

On giving the recipients more control over education: the OLPC project demonstrates that nations are willing to develop educational resources that reflect their language, culture, and social needs. But that is only because the XO makes it easy to distribute those resources. Print, not so easy.