Letters to the editor

Letters are welcome via email to [email protected]

Phones can work in school

Your article on the effects of using smartphones in schools focused on mental health (“Should schools ban smartphones?”, February 22nd). But there is also the impact on academic performance. Smartphones encourage multitasking, which is distracting and hurts productivity. However, the devices also support real-time learning and help students retain knowledge.

My colleagues and I conducted randomised controlled experiments with a school in China to learn about this trade-off. Working with teachers and students aged 14-21, we found that grades on knowledge tests decreased when smartphones were allowed in the classroom compared with when they were banned. However, grades increased when students were permitted to use them in the classroom and teachers got students to turn to the devices to aid instruction. The outcomes differed across populations. For example, grade improvements came primarily from underperforming students. So allowing smartphones in classrooms may help narrow gaps in academic performance.

Smartphones should be allowed in classrooms if teachers ask students to use them for learning purposes. We should not ask teachers to police device usage. Instead, we should ask them to embrace technologies that are unlikely to disappear and use them productively.

Pedro Ferreira
Professor of information systems
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh

How aid is cut

As you noted, the British government has left itself only nasty choices about how to cut spending on international development (“The last cut is the deepest”, March 1st). As the quantity of spending on aid is cut, quality matters, both for effective soft power as well as the statutory obligation to use Official Development Assistance for poverty reduction. That means sustaining bilateral aid in poor countries.

Effective bilateral technical assistance strengthens the hand of national elites who can sustain a development bargain for growth. That is good for poverty reduction and secures British partnerships where the alternative is losing friends to China, or even Russia. Spending through multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank, does not project British soft power, and does not align with Britain’s new security needs.

With two years to implement cuts, Britain should move away from multilateral obligations, however embarrassing, to sustain bilateral aid and so avoid repeating the reputation-shredding cuts of 2022. The British government should also reduce fragmentation. All of the aid budget should come back under the Foreign Office, which has the systems to manage it well to achieve value for money for taxpayers.

MARK HENSTRIDGE
Chief executive
Oxford Policy Management
Oxford

Poverty in India

I was pleased to see that my long-out-of-print book, “In the Land of Poverty”, is still proving useful to understanding India (Free exchange, March 1st). You were right to emphasise that agriculture has been the pathway out of dire poverty for many millions in India. The Green Revolution and massive government spending in rural India accelerated poverty reduction from the late 1970s. Land reform, undertaken from the 1950s to early 1970s, was arguably even more critical. Tragically, far too little redistribution was done, leaving in place a massive burden of dire poverty among those with little to no farmland.

Where I disagree with you is the claim that extreme poverty is now at negligible levels in India. The World Bank’s international poverty line marks destitution, not extreme poverty. Lant Pritchett, formerly
with the bank, calls this demarcation “absurdly low and completely arbitrary”, with “no science, no economics” buttressing it.

In the unremarkable village that I focus on in Uttar Pradesh, roughly 15% of the families still live in destitution. They eat little and badly. Even devastating illnesses go untreated. They have no savings. No one knows what this rate is nationally, as the government led by Narendra Modi has suppressed unpleasant economic and welfare data for a decade. The scholars I respect estimate that more than 10% of the population remain in such dire conditions, not the 1% that Surjit Bhalla, the government’s delegate to the IMF until recently, has arrived at through statistical legerdemain.

The numbers in extreme poverty—as distinct from destitution—are certainly far larger still. In all likelihood, another 30-40% of India’s people live in extreme poverty, mainly in north and central India. Life is precarious and desperate even for those who are a fold or two above extreme poverty. They get by only because they have men toiling in the cities and women toiling on their small fields. The reality is that celebrations of the end of mass poverty in India are premature.

Siddharth Dube
New York

Bat and ball

I question just how much artificial intelligence can add to a pitcher’s performance in baseball (“The new ball game”, February 15th). Apart from arm motion and release, there are essentially five variables that matter on a given pitch: speed, location, ball movement, sequence and game context (score, inning, baserunners, and so on). Savvy pitchers and catchers can comprehend these with minimal, if any, AI guidance. As much as I resist technology intruding into sports, I do support automating the calling of balls and strikes. Too often, especially in critical situations, the pitcher and the batter face not only each other, but the home-plate umpire’s subjectivity as well.

Dr Robert Keidel
Lecturer in organisational dynamics
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia

The Gunners v the Hammers

You article on the apparent upsurge in football hooliganism (“Fever pitch”, February 22nd) predicted that a match between Arsenal and West Ham would be fiercely fought, but among fans in the stands and not on the pitch, as Arsenal was the overwhelming favourite to win. Alas, in front of a well-behaved crowd, in a hard-fought game West Ham triumphed 1-0 over Arsenal at the latter’s home ground. Never bet on the beautiful game.

Tony Moore
Norwich

He admired her curvature

I’m sure other readers, too, smiled at the idea of physics-based erotic writing (“Full steam ahead”, March 1st). But the example you cited of “static distortions in biaxial nematics” was pretty bland. Limp even. More forceful prose might advance the genre. For example, quantum-mechanical entanglement and observer-participancy in the measurement process suggests: “Their long-planned tryst in Copenhagen was frustrated when, with a careless glance, she collapsed his wavefunction.”

I could give you other examples, in much poorer taste.

J.W. Armstrong
Sierra Madre, California

So college-educated people are having sex less frequently (“The old college try”, February 15th). Perhaps this is because education promotes creativity, innovation and imagination. Quality, not quantity, is what is being maximised here. It’s a theory that deserves much more research.

Jim Moore
Bayside, California