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.
Sugata MitraRead
We need a pedagogy free from fear and focused on the magic of children's innate quest for information and understanding.
Interpretation
Education should empower children to explore and learn without fear, celebrating their natural curiosity.
This quote by Sugata Mitra emphasizes the importance of creating an educational environment that prioritizes the innate curiosity of children over fear-based learning. It advocates for a pedagogy that inspires wonder and encourages children to actively seek out information and understanding, promoting a more engaging and effective learning process.
In practice
This quote can be used in a teacher's seminar to highlight innovative teaching methods.
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
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.
Students are rewarded for memorization, not imagination or resourcefulness.
Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life.
Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.
Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.
The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesn't teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.
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