We need a pedagogy free from fear and focused on the magic of children's innate quest for information and understanding.
Sugata MitraRead
I was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project, where a computer with an internet connection was put in a Delhi slum. When the slum was revisited after a month, the children of that slum had learned how to use the worldwide web.
Interpretation
Access to technology can empower and educate underprivileged communities.
The quote highlights the transformative power of providing access to technology in underserved areas. Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall project demonstrates how children in a Delhi slum, given a computer and internet access, were able to independently learn and harness the resources of the worldwide web, showcasing the potential for self-directed learning and education in any environment.
In practice
During a conference on digital education, this quote can illustrate the impact of technology on learning.
We need a pedagogy free from fear and focused on the magic of children's innate quest for information and understanding.
It's quite fashionable to say that the educational system is broken. It's not broken. It's wonderfully constructed. It's just that we don't need it anymore.
The Indian education system, like the Indian bureaucratic system, is Victorian and still in the 19th century. Our schools are still designed to produce clerks for an empire that does not exist anymore.
In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer - in any language - would reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.
If children have interest, then Education happens
Students are rewarded for memorization, not imagination or resourcefulness.
I immersed myself in The Periodic Table gladly and gratefully. There is nothing superfluous here, everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderful pure, and beautifully translated...I was deeply impressed.
Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.
Of course there is no denying the possible pleasure of holing up with a fat, slow-moving, mediocre novel; still, we all know that we can indulge ourselves in that fashion only so much. In the end, we read not for reading's sake, but to learn.
Spare the rod and spoil the child - that is true. But, beside the rod, keep an apple to give him when he has done well.
Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be - The unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future.
The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.