Uruguay, South America
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From The Economist print edition
Laptops for all: Education in Uruguay
A pioneering project’s chequered start.
For the past year the pupils of Escuela 95, in a poor neighbourhood of Montevideo, have had a new learning tool. Each has been issued with a laptop computer. This has been of particular help to the 30 or so children with severe learning difficulties, says Elias Portugal, a special-needs teacher at the school. Before, he struggled to give them individual attention. Now, the laptops are helping them with basic language skills. "The machines capture the kids’ attention. They can type a word and the computer pronounces it," he says.
Nearly all of Uruguay’s 380,000 primary-school pupils have now received a simple and cheap XO laptop, a model developed by One Laptop Per Child, an NGO based in Massachusetts. The government hopes this will help poorer and disadvantaged children do better in school while also improving the overall standard of education. These ambitions will be tested for the first time later this month when every Uruguayan seven-year-old will take online exams in a range of academic subjects. The rest of the world should be intrigued: the first country in Latin America to provide free, compulsory schooling will become the first, globally, to find out whether furnishing a whole generation with laptops is a worthwhile investment. (Peru, a bigger, poorer and less homogenous country, is trying something similar.)
The scheme has already proved popular. Miguel Brechner, the organiser, says it has brought home-computing to tens of thousands of poorer households, while also reducing truancy. It is fairly cheap. Each machine costs $260 (including teacher-training and connection charges) and the estimated annual maintenance cost is $21. In total, the scheme has cost less than 5% of the education budget.
But is this the best use of the money? There have been several glitches. The first 50,000 laptops arrived loaded with software in English, not Spanish. In Escuela 95, up to half of the students in some classes have broken their machines, usually by cracking the screen or snapping the antennae that pick up a Wi-Fi signal. When poor, rural children wreck theirs, they often prefer to keep their new status symbol clutched to their chests than risk the postal service not returning it promptly from the central maintenance centre. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
By PAOLA SINGER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Uruguay’s Boutique Wineries Find the World Stage
Pizzorno Family Estates is a winery in Uruguay, a country that began pressing grapes more than a hundred years ago but remains largely unknown in the wine world. Without the financial resources or marketing expertise of its bigger winemaking neighbors, Argentina and Chile, Uruguay lags far behind in recognition. But thanks to a group of ambitious boutique wineries, it is slowly winning over critics and connoisseurs.
"I was favorably impressed by what they are doing," said Evan Goldstein, a San Francisco master sommelier who recently visited Uruguay. "It’s an industry that candidly wants to get outside, and what’s intrinsically exciting is that it’s all family-owned, which is a rarity in this business."
Uruguay’s temperate climate is suited for wine growing, with warm summers, cool winters and ocean breezes that flow freely through low hills and plains. The conditions are similar to those of France’s Bordeaux region.
For most of the 20th century, the country produced mainly unsophisticated table reds for local consumption. After a nationwide replanting of imported clone vines, which began in the late ’70s, the industry was finally able to focus on quality. In recent years, about 20 wineries began courting international markets with inventive blends and a signature red called tannat.
Tannat grapes, originally from the southwest of France, were first planted in Uruguay in 1870 by a Basque immigrant. The vines flourished, yielding a suppler taste than their highly astringent (because of high tannin levels) European counterparts. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
