It doesn't matter whether ivory towers everywhere are right or not in requiring the mostly nonsense that is the key to their doors, a role modelled in the rich countries ivy-covered buildings. Suffice it to say that they do, and that teachers are left to pick up the mess, and deliver it. And everyone's future depends on how they measure up on it.

Teachers need help with classroom content. We can help them, and the kids. Or better yet, we could and should help them help themselves, maybe the biggest challenge, worth of our best.

Education is often the best parts within a rotten system in countries that just don't seem to get their act together otherwise. We could make it work, and then also add value beyond the basics.

isn't there a better way? (like constructivism...)

Probably. But my point is that it doesn't matter. You may dislike the law of gravity; just don't let that make you think kids are safe horseplaying on a trampoline.

A kid might be great at exploring and creativity, and maybe one of the very few that will escape the potholed ways of learning, or just different. He might be the next Spielberg, for all we know, especially if he emigrates and gets discovered as a genius elsewhere, to show the success of constructivism in his home country.

In the here and now he must get to High School, and to the University, if he will have a chance at being taken seriously in building his country.

Let us build learning success here

The system is such that kids need to learn what they are taught, or else. Yet you don't have to: this being the 21st century, there's a lot of freedom for you now. Freedom to find your place in construction work, as a chai wallah, or fruit peddler, your choice, your liberty. Of course, you may eventually make it as a salesman or something (hopefully mostly legal stuff), or as an artist, as if the later could earn a living south of the Rio Grande...

At the very least, we can make it less painful for kids and teachers, better as to quantity and quality, and then build up from there. But it won't happen if we are in denial.

what is curricular content?

A good start would be to decide what we mean.
For part one I had called it "yap yap". Yet curricular content is a deadly serious business, an industry that even its ancillaries move billions of dollars. Intel spent a bit in the form of skoool.com and its "national" variants (hope you have fast internet for this link!), quite effective demo eye-candy, great lubricant to get governments to assume the position and enjoy it when they buy Classmates. (a Uruguayan teacher commented Skoool a while back. It has improved some, since, but not that much.)

ROSBT means how ready something is to use in class, compared to how much unpaid time the teacher needs to sort things out. "Return On Sweat, Blood and Tears".

They just want to be happy

How can we turn this around?

First thing, accept reality. Reality is that right now the priority should not be not to attempt to produce brilliant entrepreneurs and artists that will fail to launch because their acquired skills, if any, are alien to their own cultures.

Success, for now and the foreseeable future, happens within the system, and then maybe we can change the system from within. The grade and performance-based system includes MIT itself, and obviously every elementary grade room in Rwanda, and is connected to all what makes up formal education today, foreign and domestic.

By all means let's put a glaze of constructivism and all that is good, but the core of what the XO delivers should be supportive of what the teachers are doing now, improving on that, adding good stuff and removing the worst, gradually. It's irresponsible to pretend that one single wish will change how kids are growing up, while the environment they are required to fit in is unchanged, and its expectations almost completely the opposite of initiative and exploration.

A se non e vero story: as part of the radical changes against all the evil imperialism legacy, the new president of a former British colony commanded that henceforth all road traffic was to drive on the right. His aides retorted that it would be hard to enforce. He agreed. The decree was drafted so that only government drivers were required to follow the order immediately, all others had 90 days to transition from their usual left-handed driving... We need to prevent the easy to foretell head-on collisions between constructivist, innocent kids, and the harsh and unforgiving environment that requires them to fulfil other expectations.

Maybe some day academic prowess will not be a hurdle to what some believe is "real" learning. Until then, we do kids a major, huge disservice if we do not help them jump, and instead are on denial about the hurdles that do exists. Or pretend these will just go away because we are so clever and wise up here in the clouds of our own rich-country coffee-shop wisdom. Administrators assuming that teachers will navigate the Internet and Wikipedia to prepare brand new lesson plans, on top and beyond of all the usual work they are required to do, is not merely cruel. It is irresponsible. (some teachers manage to - mostly unrecognized heroes, "quijotes", as we call them with affection and cariño)

We need to prioritize making quality curricular content available within ICT for Education deployments, whether they use the XO or not, and especially for the XO, the best hardware so far. Truly integrate the ICT tool to classroom work. That is what kids need, that is what teachers need, what parents expect, what will make a difference the day of university entry exams and beyond.

If those who could don't care, if those who would don't want, if those who can don't dare, someone should. Let's!