Emergent Learning

There is a criticism abroad that TED is biased towards the optimist; that all the lectures are upbeat and hopeful. Why that should be cautionary probably says a lot about this world.

Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist, has a lecture on TED explaining his "Hole in the Wall" thesis. He cut a hole in a wall separating his 21st century office from an Indian slum, installed a computer and internet hookup and waited. What emerged was remarkable evidence that learning--even about totally foreign topics taught sometimes in a foreign language--was a communal experience enhanced by only minimal support. More, it is not individual, not formal, not top-down and does not require teachers. It sounds like an old American plains single room schoolhouse. (This implies, I suppose, that children can be taught anything with little structure, even crazy things.) Of course every teachers union will put a fatwa out on him.

Mitra says, "Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.” Emergent!

If you build it, they will learn.