I really appreciate the sentiment here but why not just point him to duolingo English for French speakers? As a foreign language nerd, I feel the whole audio book read along thing is more of an advanced level learning tool, or perhaps something you would do when there are no normal course materials in the target language.
Can anyone recommend ways of finding out about low cost / direct impact things like this? I'd much prefer to fund a specific laptop than throwing money into the void of big charities.
We circle jerk about providing people computers when they need food, shelter, medical care, and a functioning systemic care system that enables people to integrate, learn the language, and find work. This is pablum of the worst sort - the slacktivist, feel-good variety.
I appreciate charity and I am convinced there is not enough of it (philanthropy isn't enough and often misses the point of helping others which is not self-glorification, but the death of ego). However, some things bothered me about this article.<p>First, the article is rather vacuous and chaotic in content, and so the motive for writing the article shifts toward drawing attention to oneself ("Oh, look how charitable I am!"). Charity doesn't do that. Second, the article seems to reinforce the condescending/patronizing attitude Americans often have toward immigrants when they're not busy hating them. The attitude consists in thinking that immigrants come from backward, horrible, uncivilized places and that the American is the noble, better educated, civilized, great benefactor. There is pleasure in the delusional superiority. (White upper middle class college students also have a rite of passage known as peace corp or a semester abroad in Africa, but I digress.) Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. If you're going to have people chip in, at least have the courtesy to buy them a more recent piece of technology. There are better ways of integrating the family into the community. Fourth, and perhaps the most minor of my points, there is a waft of Linux ideology in the air (this related to first point).
I don't understand why couldn't the immigrant family just get a pirate Windows? Torrents are standard solutions to people who have no money to purchase software. They break the law, but the risk of prosecution is slim to none, so why not do it? They can start purchasing software as soon as they can afford it. No reason to stop them from being able to be a productive members of the society now.<p>I come from Russia where me and all the other kids of my age used solely a pirated software. Now I am building software for other people and only have licensed software on my computer. If I was not allowed to use Windows, as well as other supercool development apps from Adobe, etc, then that would be a simple waste of life.<p>It sounds like the guy imposed Linux on this family who didn't know what their real choices were (even though some may have been unethical).