(Also see A Response To Questions About Sugata Mitra)

Professor Sugata Mitra is famous for his “holes in the wall” experiments where he placed computers in impoverished Indian communities and students “self-organized” their instruction.

Now, with a substantial grant from TED Talks, he’s planning an ambitious expansion of his program.

You certainly can’t beat his story, and I’m sure that some children have benefited from his work. I’ve got to say, though, I’ve had questions about his approach for awhile, and it goes back to my nineteen year community organizing career (prior to becoming a teacher ten years ago).

When I was organizing, I periodically would hear or read about people’s romanticized view of community organizing — about how everything just needs to “bubble-up” from “the people.”

Well, that’s not what organizing is really about. Yes, the issues and relationships are based in local communities. However, we organizers are not “potted plants” (a great phrase, unfortunately borrowed from Oliver North’s attorney during the Iran/Contra hearings many years ago). We’re paid (by our members and their institutions) to think about strategy and tactics, and have the time to do it while our members are dealing with the myriad challenges of their own lives.

We then take the concerns they have told us and develop ideas for tactics and strategies which we share with them. Then — and this is the key — they react to our ideas, change them, modify them, and make them into their own.

That’s how change and growth typically happens.

From what I read, Professor Mitra raises important questions about how teaching is often done ineffectively in our traditional institutions, and key questions about the role of the teacher. It just seems a little too simplistic to me:

We need teachers to do different things. The teacher has to ask the question, and tell the children what they have learned. She comes in at the two ends, a cap at the end and a starter at the beginning.

I also find it interesting that, in that same interview, he says his approach only works with 8-12 year olds — not younger or older children, and not with adults.

A search for critiques of his work are easy to find online, though I have no way of judging their validiy. There are many that question the accuracy of his reports on the effectiveness of his experiments.

I’m concerned that when people make broad claims for success, and then are not successful, often “the baby gets tossed with the bathwater” — that many of the valid questions about how schools function now that Professor Mitra makes will be dismissed if, and when, he doesn’t deliver his promised results.

And there is reason to be concerned. I’ve posted in the past about studies that show pretty clearly that Professor Mitra’s kind of “unassisted discovery learning” is typically ineffective.

What do you think? Am I being overly-critical? Am I misrepresenting Professor Mitra’s work? What might I be missing?

(You also might be interested in Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the Wall by Audrey Watters)

For your information, here’s Professor Mitra’s recent TED Talk:

PBS is airing a special TED Talks Education program on May 7th. It’s an interesting line-up of speakers, and I thought I’d list a few of them along with previous posts in this blog that readers might find helpful:

Bill Gates will be speaking about, among other things, his big new $5 billion initiative to videotape teachers. You might find these posts useful:

Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way)

The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom

Many of my previous posts about Gates, along with his MET Project.

Professor Angela Duckworth will be speaking about “grit.” Check out her work at The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit.”

Geoffrey Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone. You can find a link to my many posts — both positive and critical — here.

Sir Ken Robinson. Check out a previous post and video titled “You Cannot Make A Plant Grow — You Can Provide The Conditions For Growth.”

You might also be interested in The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).

I’ve previously posted several times about TED-Ed, the useful relatively new “arm” of TED Talks (see Using TED-Ed Videos, where I describe how I use them, and The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).

To celebrate their one-year anniversary, they’ve unveiled a new video to explain the service. It has useful info, though the computer-generated narrator seems a little strange to me:

TED has just published The 10 most popular TED-Ed lessons so far.

I’m adding it to The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).