Hole In The Wall
Last week in my Organisation, we had a small presentation done by an NGO (Buniyad). Buniyad is a NGO which works with various organisation (including one of ours) to get their CSR role implemented. Buniyad works for upbringing of kids for slums.
According to their presentation and work, they were doing a great job for preparing kids to get in to regular schools and be competitive in real world.
After presentation I recollected an article which was published in Rd (Readers Digest – June 2009 Ed). Article was Title “Hole in The Wall“. Article was on work done by “Sugata Mitra” and his theory of education. The article describes, How a unique computer experiment is transforming the lives of the under privileged children. It was also the real inspiration for the movie “Slumdog Millionaire“.
Experiment is described as Computers were installed at various kiosk in numerous cities in India. Under privileged kids were allowed a free access. There was no guidance, supervision. No one came for their Aid. within few days it was identified kids could have internet access. They were browsing surfing, playing online games.
Mitra believed that a mixture of group discussion,leaving the children to learn for themselves and a desire to impress their peers or elders was a powerful combination for getting them to study unaided.
I was basically not convinced, the same, but when i left my PC for free access to kids in our family. I could not believe results. I had informed kids that My PC has no games. i challenged them that if they found one i would let them play it. Kids have seen a PC but never used it. Hence i was confident of they would never find it. Actually there were no games either on PC. Kids out smarted me. Not less then 2 hours, i found kids trying to keep watch on me. as if they don’t want me to see what they were doing.
Later on I came to know that i have lost a challenge as kids have found Windows XP default games. I was ashamed of myself. Now i believe in what “Sugata Mitra’s Theory”. The theory which he says is “India’s gift to the world“. Then why are kids in our own country are left away from such a discovery. Mitra and his organisation have tried to give maximum they could for this country.
Questions asked are:
- What’s next?
- Are all kids going to get benefited?
- With Mitra moving out for India to NewCastle university, has Theory drained out of India, to West again?
- Whenever I look at a kids on streets, I see one question in their eyes, “When will I see, Hole in the Wall?”
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