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Critics of one-to-one laptop programs in the United States say the computers facilitate more in-class distraction (instant messaging, MySpace, and so on) than learning, that they allow children access to inappropriate content, and that the benefits of constant access are so far unproven. Do you share those concerns? We do not share those concerns, but that is not to say they are not real issues. Our kids in Cambodia learn English using chat and MySpace. Children are distracted if the teaching is not interesting. One education minister just said to us, about the $100 laptop, "Finally, education will include learning."

In Finland the educational system, as it is today, was build slowly. It is still strongly relying on the work of Uno Cygnaeus ( 1810-1888 ) who was influenced by the early European “constructivist” Pestalozzi ( 1746–1827 ) and Froebel ( 1782 –1852 ). The idea that children learn the best when they areactive and build things was not really invented by John Dewey or Piaget – they only were able to present the idea in a language of positivist science, when the earlier thinkers thought themselves as “pedagogues” or educational philosophers.