>>Sugata Mitra: Gosh, after Burberry's and
the royal wedding, this is going to be a bit
of a comedown.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: The topic of my talk is dismantling
a mismanaged brand, the opposite of the previous
session.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: Well, about 12 years ago,
I'd built myself a do-it-yourself ATM and
stuck that into a wall in a slum just to see
what would happen.
Because at that time, there were no teachers
-- there still aren't any teachers who would
want to go into a slum and teach.
One of the problems with this mismanaged brand,
education, is that good teachers are never
where they should be. They're always in rich,
private organizations.
So I put this computer in there just to see
what would happen, and I found, after a while,
that the children who had not seen a computer
before and didn't know any English had not
heard of the Internet or browsing.
And people said, "Well, that's very simple.
You know, Delhi is full of computer programmers
and young people who know about computers.
Somebody was passing by and showed them how
to use the mouse."
So I repeated the experiment. I said, "I must
try this somewhere where the chances of a
passing software professional is very low."
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: So I found a village way out
of Delhi and I repeated the experiment.
When I repeated the experiment, I found that
the children were doing the same thing.
I went back there after a couple of months
and there were two children playing a game
and they --
Can you just go back once, please?
There were a couple of children playing a
game, and as soon as they saw me, they said,
"We want a faster processor and a better mouse."
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: So I said, "They're not supposed
to be saying all this."
And they said, "You know, this thing over
here, it works only in English so we had to
teach ourselves English in order to use it.
It's really very difficult."
But they were doing it.
So I then got some funding to see if this
would happen everywhere or whether it was
accidental, and I repeated this in about 20
villages in India chosen for their geographical
positioning and for their ethnic and genetic
diversities.
And we found that it works exactly the same
way everywhere.
That little film clip will give you a glimpse
of those years.
Can you just go back and click, please?
I can't go back with this. I can go only forward.
Yeah. Okay.
[Video.]
>>Sugata Mitra: That's the very first day
at the Hole in the Wall, a 10-year-old with
his 6-year-old student.
This is the deserts of Rajasthan.
They had discovered the sound recorder and
they were teaching -- listening to their own
music, 
and so on, across village after village.
So at the end of this period, I was measuring
all along and we got a learning curve which
was the same as children who were taught,
and that was kind of puzzling in those days
-- remember, this is 10 years ago -- that
how could this just be happening just by itself.
So we came to this conclusion that groups
of children can learn to operate a computer
and the Internet on their own, irrespective
of who they are or where they are.
So I started to get curious about what else
they might be able to do by themselves.
In the city of Hyderabad, a big sprawling
city in southern India, I found myself an
interesting problem.
There were schools where children were learning
English but their pronunciation was terrible
because they were copying the accents of their
local teacher.
So I bought them a computer with speech-to-text,
which you get free with Windows nowadays.
I bought them one and I connected it to the
Internet and I said to them, you know, "Make
yourself understood."
They spoke into the computer. The computer
produced absolute nonsense.
So the children said, "How do we make ourselves
understood?"
So I invented a new educational method. I
said, "I have no idea, and anyway, I'm going
away."
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: I left them.
When I came back two months later, I met a
little boy outside the classroom and I said
to him in English, "Faizan, how are you?"
And Faizan looks up at me and says, "Fantastic."
So I said, "What's going on inside?"
They had downloaded the speaking Oxford dictionary.
They were typing words into it. The dictionary
was speaking it out. They were saying the
word back into the text-to-speech and seeing
if the computer produced it correctly. They
had invented a pedagogy.
So I was getting more and more curious now,
and the reports from the slums of Delhi were
curious.
The computers had been around for nine months
and the teachers were saying, "You know, the
standard of English of the children has increased
absolutely dramatically, and the quality of
their answers to questions, their homework,
is just fantastic. It's very deep."
I thought, how can a dirty old ATM stuck in
a wall do all this for children?
So I went to find out, and I discovered the
answer.
Six months down the line, they had discovered
Google. They were Googling their homework,
so their English was perfect.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: Their answers were deep.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: Okay? And the teachers were
stunned.
And I thought to myself, "My God, what have
I done? Is this learning?"
But I would get an answer to that question
six years later from Gateshead, England, which
is what I have to tell you very quickly.
Here's a sample of those children in Hyderabad.
[Video.]
>>Sugata Mitra: Well, that girl's now 22 and
some of you may actually know her because
she works for a call center in Hyderabad.
Might have tried to sell you a credit card
or something.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: So good for her if she did.
So at this time, I got an interesting phone
call from the late science fiction writer,
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who had been following
my work, and I went to meet him in Colombo,
and he said two things to me which I still
remember and I think all educators should
listen to.
The first one was: A teacher that can be replaced
by a machine should be. Okay?
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: The second was: When learners
have interest, education happens.
So armed with these two sentences, I started
to research on what else can children learn
all across Africa, across Cambodia, and so
on, and came to a rather interesting conclusion.
[Video.]
>>Sugata Mitra: Groups of children can navigate
the Internet to achieve educational objectives
on their own.
So far, schoolteachers were very good friends
of mine. They used to say, "It's wonderful
children can teach themselves to use a computer.
Children can improve their pronunciation."
When I said this one, that they can achieve
educational objectives on their own, they
started to get a little grim and said, "Well,
we don't know about that."
By this time, I had come to this conclusion,
that groups of children can learn all sorts
of things by themselves.
The question was: Is there something they
couldn't learn?
Well, we called this "minimally invasive education."
In 2006, Newcastle University got a large
research fund for -- one back, please -- a
large research fund for improving, of all
things, the quality of education in Indian
schools, and they called me.
So, you know, I'd been working for 45 years
in Delhi, so I looked up the weather in Newcastle,
bought myself an overcoat, and moved there
in 2006.
Having moved there, I gave a similar lecture
to a faculty, and they said, "You know, you're
a bit daft. You can't say that children can
learn everything by themselves."
So I said, "Well, let's design an experiment
for something that children cannot learn by
themselves."
So I made a research question: Can Tamil-speaking
question in a tsunami-hit village in southern
India teach themselves the biotechnology of
DNA replication in English from a roadside
computer?
Okay?
I said, "This is going to be a cinch. I'll
give them a test. They'll get a zero. I'll
give them a post-test. They'll get a zero.
I'll come back to New Castle and say we teachers,
we're needed."
So off I went. I found myself a village. It's
called Kalikuppam. It's in -- near Pondicherry
in India. It was hit by the tsunami. Its school
was destroyed, most of the adult population
dead.
I had given the children in Kalikuppam two
computers to play with, Hole in the Wall computers.
They were very good at that.
Into those computers I put in some material
in biotechnology -- DNA replication -- and
said to the children, "This is very important
but it's all in English, I'm afraid."
So they looked at it and said, "How can we
understand it? It's full of diagrams and chemistry
and big English words."
So I used my educational method and I said,
"I don't know how you'll understand it. Anyway,
I'm going away."
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: So I left them there.
I came back after two months, and the children
marched in looking very silent.
I said, "What did you understand?"
They said, "Nothing."
I said, "Nothing?"
"No, nothing at all. It's just way too hard."
So I said, "How long did it take you to figure
that out, that you can't understand it?"
They said, "No, we look at it every day."
So I said, "You don't understand anything
and you look at the same thing every day?"
So that little girl who's, you know, bow you
can see? She raises a hand. She was 12 then.
And she says to me in broken Tamil and English,
"Apart from the fact that improper replication
of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease,
we've understood nothing else."
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: So I learned another lesson.
That when a child says, "I don't -- I haven't
understood," don't take him at face value.
God knows what he's understood.
So I post-tested them. I got an educational
impossibility. 0 to 30% in two months. Streetside
-- remember the context. Streetside, middle
of the topical afternoon, biotechnology on
DNA replication in English on a roadside computer.
It was impossible, but it had happened in
Kalikuppam.
But 30 is too bad because it's a fail. How
do I get them to pass?
I found a friend that they had, a local girl
who is 22. She's an accountant. And I asked
her, "Listen, can you teach them some more
biotechnology?"
She said, "Absolutely not. I didn't have any
science in school. I don't understand a word
of what's going on on that screen."
So I said, "Use the method of the grandmother.
Stand behind them and every time they do anything
at all, just say, 'Wow, that's fantastic.
Can you do a little more of it? When I was
your age, I could never have done anything
like that. I was really stupid."
She did that for two more months. The scores
jumped to 50%, same as my control school in
New Delhi with a trained biotechnology teacher.
I returned to Newcastle and I said, "I haven't
found it. I haven't found the limit I was
looking for."
It's just recently been published.
So by this time, I thought it's time to say
this: Groups of children can learn almost
anything on their own.
That word "almost"? Well, I want to get rid
of it, but, yes, at the moment, they can learn
almost anything on their own.
So having experimented all over the world
in all these exotic locations, I came to the
most remote and exotic place that I have ever
been to. Gateshead, England.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: Oh, this one doesn't work
with an English audience. In India, it works
beautifully.
[Laughter]
>>Sugata Mitra: I'll say, "5,000 miles from
New Delhi, across the River Thames is the
hamlet of Gateshead." And the audience gasps.
So in Gateshead, I had a method. Take children,
tell them to make groups of four by themselves.
You say, "I don't know who your friends are.
You can make groups of four. Every group of
four must have one computer."
Why one to four? That's what we learned at
the Hole in the Wall. Usually one computer
surrounded by four or five children.
"You can talk as much as you like within your
group. If you don't like your group, you can
leave them and go away to another group."
You can talk across groups. You can go over
to another group, look over their shoulder,
see what they are doing, come back to your
own group and claim that it's your own idea.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: You know, in other words,
use the university research methodology.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
>>Sugata Mitra: I'm being unkind to my employer.
So they did this. I gave them six GC SE questions
six years ahead of their time. The first group
got everything right in 25 minutes, the worst
in 45. The teachers came back in. The teacher
said so what? They have been using Google,
they have been using Wikipedia, they have
been using Answer Bag, Ask Jeeves, so what
are you trying to prove? So I said, well,
I will come back in two months.
I came back in two months, I gave them sheets
of paper and I said answer the six GC SE questions
without computers, without talking to each
other. They got the same stores. This time
the teachers were stunned. They said they
are reproducing those screens they saw six
months ago with clarity.
I don't know what went on inside that experiment
but two years later now they can still say
exactly what those answers are, maybe because
they had found it for themselves and I hadn't
told them.
So we had the beginnings of a new method.
And here is a set of brief glimpse. This is
Gateshead.
So it looks a bit chaotic but it settles down.
How far can we go?
I got invited to tour in Italy to an Italian
speaking school, 32 children. I made the groups
of four using their teachers and the teachers
said how are you going to communicate with
them? They speak only Italian, they don't
understand a word of English. You don't speak
any English -- any Italian.
So I said I don't know. But, you know, let's
see what happens.
So I started writing questions in English
on the white board. I wrote down how did dinosaurs
die out? The children said can't understand
anything. What's this?
So I said I bring all teachers back. They
said no, no, no. We understand everything.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sugata Mitra: They typed the English sentence
into Google translate, got the Italian, fed
it into the Italian Internet and got answer.
I started writing more and more questions
and this is what happened.
[ Video ]
[ Children chattering ]
>>Sugata Mitra: 20 minutes later the two main
theories of dinosaur extinction.
Next one didn't take them any time at all,
where is Calcutta? Just ten minutes and they
had it.
Now I got really ambitious. Who was Pythagoras
and what did he do? These are ten years old.
They stand there silenced for a while and
then one of them comments up to me and says,
"You have spelled it wrong."
[ Laughter ]
[ Video ]
[ Children chattering ]
>>Sugata Mitra: 30 minutes later, the right-angle
triangles.
[ Laughter ]
[ Video ]
>>Sugata Mitra: They had begun to type in
Pythagoras's equation back into Google. Google
was taking them off into Einstein's special
theory of relativity and they were going along.
The Italian teachers came back and said to
me something I have never ever heard a teacher
say. They said, "Shall we stop them?" Well,
you have to decide.
The method itself started to spread. Here
is Melbourne. And the questions started to
get more complex. What happens after we die?
Is GDP related to happiness? Can trees think?
How does an iPad know where it is?
Each one will lead them into a whole set of
curricular points.
The teacher can then pick that up, like how
does an iPad know where it is? They figure
out GPS, three satellites. Very quickly out
they figure out the word trigonometry. And
then I said to them do you really want to
know how to calculate where your iPad is?
And they say yeah. So I tell the math teacher,
I just opened the door. You can teach as much
trigonometry as you like. They won't fall
asleep anymore.
Here is a little bit on Hong Kong.
[ Video ]
>>Sugata Mitra: So in conclusion, groups of
four and six, one computer per group, unrestricted
access. Interesting questions is the key to
the whole thing. e-mediation, discussion allowed,
changing of groups, et cetera. Leave them
alone.
It's happening in dozens and dozens of schools
in the Gateshead, Durham and Northumberland
area. Every school reports the same findings,
which I love, because as you heard, I am from
physics. I like to have the same results from
the same experiment.
I think we need a new primary curriculum with
just three things in it. Reading comprehension
is the most important ability that you need
in a child right now. Information searching
and retrieval skills is the second one. And
the third one that I am struggling with, if
children are alone they must have a rational
system of belief. A way by which they know
what to believe in.
We all know that, but we weren't taught it.
We developed it by ourselves. I need to find
out how to teach that or how to allow children
to get that.
So what does it all mean? I think we have
hit upon the self-organizing system. A self-organizing
system is one where the system structure appears
without any intervention from the outside.
Like a tornado. There's nothing to predict
that it's going to happen, but then it will
happen.
Self-organizing systems show emergence. Things
happen which were not designed for.
And what I think is my speculation -- well,
emergence is like, you know, you look at a
Caterpillar and there is nothing in the Caterpillar
which tells you it's going to form a cocoon
from which a butterfly is going to come out.
It's emergent.
I think, and this is speculation, an education
is a self-organizing system where learning
is the emergent phenomenon. You are free to
believe it or not. I don't know the answer.
I don't know if that is correct, but I am
going to go away now.
[ Laughter ]
