Sugata Mitra
Sugata Mitra
Sugata Mitrais Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England. He is best known for his "Hole in the Wall" experiment, and widely cited in works on literacy and education. He is Chief Scientist, Emeritus, at the for-profit training company NIIT. He won the TED Prize 2013...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth12 February 1952
CountryIndia
careers constantly exposed heroes pupils schools time tv
Too many pupils at schools in the U.K. want to have careers as footballers or TV hosts, or models, because that's what they're constantly exposed to as the heroes of our time.
developing exist good places schools
There will always be places in the world where good schools don't exist and good teachers don't want to go, not just in the developing world but in places of socioeconomic hardship.
clerks designed education empire exist produce schools
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.
books contained decide financial human knowledge operate points powers schools stored
Schools still operate as if all knowledge is contained in books, and as if the salient points in books must be stored in each human brain - to be used when needed. The political and financial powers controlling schools decide what these salient points are.
country teacher school
There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go.
children school years
Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they're learning in school. In fact, they seem to enjoy the absence of adult supervision, and they are very confident of finding the right answer.
teacher children school
The best schools tend to have the best teachers, not to mention parents who supervise homework, so there is less need for self-organised learning. But where a child comes from a less supportive home environment, where there are family tensions perhaps, their schoolwork can suffer. They need to be taught to think and study for themselves.
children school adventure
My wish is to help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. Help me build the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. I also invite you, wherever you are, to create your own miniature child-driven learning environments and share your discoveries.
education prepares
Education prepares to be one piece of a machine.
alone children computer left nine office reach secretary standard
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.
entertainment
Entertainment can be a more powerful driver than poverty.
fear focused information innate quest
We need a pedagogy free from fear and focused on the magic of children's innate quest for information and understanding.
children discovered information passing people
It would be better, in a way, if any adults present were completely uneducated. There is nothing children like more than passing on information they have just discovered to people who may not already have it - an elderly grandmother, for instance.
children coming comparison content kids learning memorize results rote test whatever whether
In most schools, we measure children on what they know. By and large, they have to memorize the content of whatever test is coming up. Because measuring the results of rote learning is easy, rote prevails. What kids know is just not important in comparison with whether they can think.