I have for many years had an interest in education and the educational system. I think it may have started with a copy of Why Johnny Can’t Read or The Closing of the American Mind found on a discount book rack when I was in college. The one incontrovertible conclusion I have come to is that absolutely everything that happens in a school needs to be measured by two yardsticks: Does it promote student safety? and Does it educate students? Once we have established that it is safe and educational, then we can start asking more difficult questions, such as what it teaches and how well it does so. If it isn’t safe and educational, it doesn’t belong in school. The end.
Perhaps my ideas on education and education reform are biased by the fact that I read downright subversive things on the subject, such as the writings of Etta Kralovec and former award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto. Kralovec speaks to me about what schools should be like; Gatto speaks to that part of me that realized many years ago that most teachers are not out there to teach independent thought. There are of course many excellent exceptions to this idea, but they are yet a minority. Perhaps one in ten of the teachers and professors you remember wanted you to truly think beyond applying a narrow classroom concept to a narrow classroom example.
Nevertheless, I read a news item last night that caused my jaw to drop open. It involves a series of experiments in India involving unschooled children and unsupervised computer use. This IT expert set up computer kiosks in areas of poverty, positioned so that only kids could use them. And then he set the kids loose. The results are consistent:
With the computer switched on, the children press all the keys and every mouse button.
But Sugata has noticed a pattern emerging after the first initial chaos.
“You find that the noise level begins to come down, and from somewhere a leader appears.
“Often his face is not visible in the crowd, but he is controlling the mouse because suddenly you see the mouse begin to move in an orderly fashion.
“And then suddenly a lot of children’s voices will say ‘Oh, that pointer can be moved!’ And then you see the first click, which – believe it or not – happens within the first three minutes.”
Narput Singh has the mouse and takes control. And within three minutes he has clicked and, to his surprise and pleasure, inadvertently opened a game.
He doesn’t distinguish between educational games and those that are just for fun, and he is soon learning English words through a painting game with colours to fill in.
Whilst he is picking up the use of the computer directly, others around him are absorbing what he does.
For Sugata, it is this group learning which is significant.
“We know that in nine months the entire group of children in a village would have reached approximately the level of an office secretary, which means they know dragging and dropping files, they know downloading, they can play video and audio and they can surf the internet”.
That’s right. Within 3 minutes, leadership evolves, and they figure out how to use a mouse. Mr. Sugata’s conclusion: “Groups of children given adequate digital resources can meet the objectives of primary education on their own – most of the objectives.” And remember, these kids started the experiment barely literate and with no computer experience whatsoever. Of course, his idea of “meet[ing] the objectives of primary education” may differ wildly from your or mine or the Principal of the local school’s idea, but the concept is intriguing, startling.
Maybe schools are the problem.
In closing, it is not too late to make noise about the Federal Government’s back door effort to put together a national ID card system at state expense. This thing goes beyond the stated purpose of trying to keep drivers licenses out of the hands of illegal immigrants. Remember, the purpose of a Drivers License is to show that you know how to drive. Just because it gets used as identification does not make that it’s primary purpose. The fact that non-compliant cards “could not be used as IDs for boarding planes, entering federal buildings or even to pick up mail at the post office” makes them an internal passport, required at checkpoints everywhere. And you won’t be able to challenge it in court, in person anyway.
I once watched a cashier refuse to take a check from a man because he had a state ID card instead of a state drivers license. He looked at her as if she were out of her mind and simply said “I am legally blind!”
Another bit of anecdotal evidence showing that we need more ability to think independently in this country.