LIFE IN THE NEW PHILIPPINES METRO SANTA ROSA Santa Rosa Magazine's SPECIAL FEATURES Section
Home   Videos   Enchanted Kingdom   San Lazaro   SM Fashion   Aquabest   PBSP   SONA   Lea Salonga   Education Revolution
SUGATA MITRA'S "HOLE IN THE WALL" PROJECT WAS A WAKE-UP CALL THAT INSPIRED RETHINK OF EDUCATION ALL OVER THE WORLD Revolutionizing education first in the Third World and then in developed countries, Dr. Mitra has proved that even children in remote areas can teach themselves and each other at low cost. Sugata Mitra's famous "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that children are able to teach themselves and each other, even in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, if they are motivated by curiosity and peer interest. In 1999 Dr. Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other. In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even with no direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who is now a Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education". The Linux Journal comments: "Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong." ********* ********* ********* HARLEM CHILDREN'S ZONE DOES MORE THAN TEACH. IT CREATES A WHOLE NEW LIFE. Geoffrey Canada demonstrates that the inner-city cycle of unemployment, poverty and jail can be changed by building new communities and providing free education from elementary school to college graduation. Geoffrey Canada at GEL Conference on Vimeo. In one of the all-time most popular GEL talks, Geoffrey Canada describes how his nonprofit Harlem Children's Zone works to help young people in inner-city Harlem. Canada issues a sober indictment of failing schools, then describes the solution that he has created. He was featured in the book "Whatever It Takes", on "Fresh Air with Terry Gross", and on "60 Minutes". If you don't know about Geoffrey Canada, you should. This video is a good place to start. Canada's staggering achievements in New York's Harlem, one of the USA's most deprived neighborhoods, show that the annual cost per child to the government when it does things right is less than 10 percent of what it costs per prison inmate later as a result of the government doing things wrong. The economic logic of his argument is a no brainer. It's irrefutable. ********* ********* ********* JOAN SULLIVAN'S APPROACH IS "WHAT'S NEXT?" THIS IS HOW SHE ACHIEVES THE IMPOSSIBLE. Just to start a public school from scratch is hard enough. But in the USA's poorest district? Then to make it one of New York's top ranked high schools? Now that takes very special qualities, and Sullivan has them. Joan Sullivan at GEL Conference on Vimeo. Joan Sullivan founded the Bronx Academy of Letters - a public, not charter, school - in the poorest congressional district in America. A few years later it was ranked as one of the top high schools in New York City. Sullivan tells her story and invites two alumni on-stage as well. A teacher commented: "After teaching school for several years, I can relate entirely to this video. I love the fact that Ms. Sullivan does not have a philosophy of education! That's the first question asked at most interviews, and if you're a new teacher, how can you know yet, what your philosophy is? You have to dig in, like the farmer, get your hands dirty, and then learn that, as she states, many philosophies work, and some better with some children than others. This was an excellent presentation, and I feel the biggest things to take away from it are that one must have high expectations of oneself and the students they teach, and as a role model, one does influence the students and gives them wings!" Sullivan has since been appointed Deputy Mayor of Education in Los Angeles - to apply her revolutionary approach to that great city's educational issues. ********* ********* ********* A "GREEN SCHOOL" IS AN UNUSUAL CONCEPT, BUT TWO RETIREES DECIDED TO START ONE. After hearing the environmental warnings of Al Gore, a retired couple who'd just sold their business decided to help in their own way by starting a school that made "green" subjects its major focus. After selling their jewelry company to retire in 2007, husband and wife team John and Cynthia Hardy founded the extraordinary Green School in Bali, where kids get a holistic and green education. At the Green School, kids learn in open-air classrooms surrounded by acres of gardens that they tend; they learn to build with bamboo; and meanwhile they're being prepared for traditional British school exams. The school is international -- 20 percent of students are Bali locals, some on scholarship. The centerpiece of the campus is the spiraling Heart of School, which may be called Asia's largest bamboo building. Hardy has long been an advocate of the use of bamboo as an alternative to timber for building and reforestation. Hardy is dyslexic and had a really hard time when he was at school in Canada. His mother told him afterwards that he was the little kid in the village who cried all the way to school. He later ran away to another world in Bali, a small island only 60 miles by 90 miles, with a Hindu culture. "Cynthia and I were there. We had had a wonderful life there, and we decided to give back locally." ********* ********* ********* GO TO EDUCATION REVOLUTION PAGE 3