Using the Web To Turn Kids Into Autodidacts

theodp writes "Autodidacticism — self-education or self-directed learning — is nothing new, but the Internet holds the promise of taking it to the masses. Sugata Mitra, an Indian physicist whose earlier educational experiments inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire, is convinced that, with the Internet, kids can learn by themselves so long as they are in small groups and have well-posed questions to answer. And now, Mitra's Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) are going global, with testing in schools in Australia, Colombia, England and India. On their own, children can get about 30% of the knowledge required to pass exams, so to go further, Dr. Mitra supplements SOLE with e-mediators, amateur volunteers who use Skype to help kids learn online."

Comments

Heck

[SilverHatHacker]

As far as programming goes, I've managed to teach myself the entire content of the courses I'm taking during my summer breaks and weekends. Admittedly, it is just basic stuff, but I now feel like I'm wasting $10k a year on schooling that I don't really need.

Re:Heck

[vlm]

I now feel like I'm wasting $10k a year on schooling that I don't really need.

You're not buying schooling, you're buying an expensive piece of paper, called a diploma, to get past the HR filter that requires it.

Re:Heck

[hedwards]

Teaching yourself is fine, but very few people are capable of doing it properly without a lot of help. Sure when it comes to something like programming you can learn on your own. What you're generally paying for with tuition is guidance and an assurance to future employers that you know what you're doing or more accurately that you've at least seen the materials.

But in general, most people lack the framework to make sense of what they're learning. Even with a degree I run into a fair number of people who don't understand more than just the basics of what was taught, they've gone to no effort to understand the whys and hows that go along with the whats involved.

If this is becoming big that's a very serious problem. The internet isn't really a place to gain an informed opinion over things. There's a lot of noise and very little quality signal to use and without having a degree to start with it's pretty much futile in terms of knowing what is and is not reliable information.

Re:Heck

[retech]

But you already had a base education.

Re:Heck

[TheLink]

Yep, nowadays you can learn a lot of stuff from the internet. For those it's more a matter of whether you want the "piece of paper" or not. Just from youtube alone you can learn undergrad stuff from MIT/Stanford/UNSW and even universities in India, guitar licks, to making a japanese omelette/omelet (tamagoyaki).

But some stuff requires physical equipment and tools that most people don't have access to. In an alternate universe public libraries would have physical tools, workshops and labs, rather than physical books - because books can be more easily duplicated :).

Re:Heck

[betterunixthanunix]

Actually, you can teach yourself about any subject that has a vast amount of information written about it, provided you're 'capable' of teaching yourself at all.

I disagree with this one. Some fields are sufficiently difficult that being "self taught" would either require someone with an exceptional intellect, or an unreasonable amount of time. I would say this is particularly true of abstract math e.g. topology, abstract algebra, etc. Anyone could pick up the basics in those subjects, assuming they had sufficient mathematical background to begin with, but I would be surprised if all but an extreme minority of people could really understand what they are doing in those fields without some sort of formal education.

Re:Heck

[Simon80]

I see your Internet education has turned you into a skilled debater.

Re:Heck

[Duradin]

If all you're getting is a diploma and not schooling that you need perhaps you should take courses more advanced than the into course.

It's college. You pick your classes. You also pick your college. So if your education doesn't seem worth it perhaps the school isn't the problem.

Re:Heck

[Hognoxious]

Your government, your protection foremost in their minds. Ignore the lobbiest.

Well said. We should focus our attention on those who are only slightly lobby, or preferably totally unlobby.

Re:Heck

[Yvanhoe]

Why limit yourself to NYC ?
World list of hackerspaces

Re:Heck

[Kijori]

Absolutely agree. Heavy use of the internet to learn seems to me to lead to a very superficial level of learning - enough to sound knowledgeable in a soundbite, but not enough to actually understanding what you're reading about or do anything non-trivial with it. It's something that I think is very apparent on Slashdot; there are a great many posts made by people who have "learnt" about something via Wikipedia but who have completely misunderstood, or over-generalised, or misinterpreted it but who remain convinced that they are experts. It perhaps comes down to the old truism that the more you learn the more you realise how ignorant you are - and as a corollary, that when you know very little you are generally unable to tell just how little you know. A good teacher can guide your learning, because he/she has a solid general understanding of the subject area. Without one you're liable to stumble across a tail and assume that it's the entire elephant.

Re:Heck

[adamofgreyskull]

Diploma is slowly becoming irrelevant.

[citation needed] Maybe you're right, but this won't happen for a long long time.

Firstly, a degree from a university shows you can apply yourself for 3-5 years and have committed significant time, money and energy to improving your knowledge of your chosen subject. This commitment, and not just "the piece of paper" is why people tend to favour university graduates.
Secondly, 99% of HR positions are *not* held by people who have a university degree in your chosen field. If they have a degree, it's in something completely unrelated to the people they're hiring, so they will favour people with a degree because it's the easiest way to filter out the people who don't know what they're doing. If they start letting through everyone who has the 2 braincells required to lie on a C.V. then the managers trying to fill those positions will end up interviewing people better suited to careers that require only the ability to say "Would you like fries with that?". And if that happens, then guess who gets it in the neck for letting through unsuitable candidates? That's right: H.R. This is why any company big enough to need an HR function will probably never consider a diploma/degree completely irrelevant.

You're right of course, there are many bright, chippy young autodidacts who deserve a job, but you need knowledgeable people in place to tell them apart from the liars and the downright crazies. So you either end up with an HR department who discounts anyone without a degree, or with managers who have to wade through the raw resumé slurry themselves every time they want to hire someone. Almost all half-way houses between those two, e.g. H.R. personnel relaying the managers' questions to the candidates lead to good candidates being dropped or crappy candidates being let through.

Re:Heck

[Palshife]

This. College is the absolute best place to explore targeted, interesting disciplines which you won't know about by cruising Wikipedia. If you're not getting your money's worth, you're doing it wrong.

Re:Heck

[Urza9814]

It's college. You pick your classes. You also pick your college. So if your education doesn't seem worth it perhaps the school isn't the problem.

Really? Out of 126 credits that I'm required to take, only about 40 of them were things I was allowed to select. And 18 of those had to be outside of my major (art classes, humanities classes, etc - things I'm not incredibly interested in as a Comp Sci major). Then I had to take some health/phys ed credits. When it comes down to it, I think there are maybe 12 or 15 credits of classes that I'm taking because I actually kinda want to take them (even those, I only had about 15 classes to choose from - there are a couple I scheduled that I"m not really interested in). Not that I haven't enjoyed some of the required courses, but I'm still, in my Junior year, re-taking classes on crap that I learned _IN HIGHSCHOOL_. Because I have to. Because I need that piece of paper to get past the HR departments. Honestly, I could have learned a _lot_ more on my own in these past three years. I learn more over the summer and over breaks than I generally do over the entire school year....taking assembly language for the second time, or my fourth introductory Java class. Or "learning" the crap that I taught myself in 7th grade.

Re:Heck

[Yvanhoe]

What do you think is more valuable to a company : someone spending 3-5 years to get a diploma, basically proving that he has funds to waste for knowledge available on internet, or 3-5 years of relevant experience ?

Re:Heck

[lessthan]

A diploma is easily verifiable, whereas "3-5 years of relevant experience" is not. Not that it matters, these days they ask for a diploma AND three to five years of experience.

First Principles

[Chelloveck]

First thing to learn: When the web site asks, "Are you at least 18 years of age?" the answer is always "Yes". All else follows from that.

Isn't this obvious?

[Haedrian]

No seriously. The amount of things I have learnt from researching on the internet...

Anyone who has ever tried to develop any non-trivial piece of software knows all about learning on your own by using the internet. What is the fuss all about? Because its for children instead of adults?

Re:Isn't this obvious?

[betterunixthanunix]

No seriously. The amount of things I have learnt from researching on the internet...

...probably seems like a lot, but does not actually go into as much depth as you might think. I know plenty of people who are "self taught" and can do a fine job of hacking together certain types of programs, but they generally do not have deeper insights into the theory behind what they are doing. That might be OK for developing certain classes of applications, but it is usually a disaster for a field like cryptography, and I would not trust someone who was "self taught" to develop safety critical software (think Therac-25).

Fear!

[Hatta]

Autodidacts are recruiting your children on the web!

Re:Fear!

[Hognoxious]

When the pedagogues get involved then it's really time to worry.

Re:Fear!

[hedwards]

Don't worry, just as long as they're not thespians. You really don't want your kids getting involved in that sort of un-Christian lifestyle.

This IS traditional education for Americans

[Alan R Light]

If you've read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education you'll know that in the 1800s the people of America were the best educated in the world, and had largely educated themselves.

Re:This IS traditional education for Americans

[Sonny Yatsen]

Can you provide a pin citation to the part of the book that supports this proposition? I really don't feel like digging through an entire book to figure out what you mentioned vaguely. Right now, it sounds more like you're trying to use your post as advertising for the book than to provide useful information.

Re:This IS traditional education for Americans

[Wonko the Sane]

I really don't feel like digging through an entire book

Clearly autodidactism is not for you.

Re:This IS traditional education for Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Gatto uses anecdotes to prove his point. Its very sneaky and sounds really nice. But its not strong scholarship. Its in fact ideologically biased scholarship. Be careful when using Gatto as proof for a point because any decent scholar with access to JStor can debunk him (and you).

Re:This IS traditional education for Americans

[Bigjeff5]

I've read it, and autodidacticism is one of the central tenants. In particular he pays a lot of attention to George Washington's self-education, which began around age 12 or 13, if I remember right, and was in full swing by the time he was 16 (when he taught himself surveying). Likely because his formal education ended so early, Washington always felt it was lacking, which he compensated for by continuing his self-education throughout his entire life.

That the man who is arguably the greatest man in American history was self taught is astounding. Mind you he was not a prodigy. He was smart, probably above average, but he was not a natural genius or anything of the sort. In fact most of the educated elite thought he was of moderate intelligence and some had a real problem with his elevated status and position of authority given his lack of formal education.

Gatto's book is definitely worth a read if you want some insight into the public education system (at least in New York) and why it works so poorly in the US.

And I don't see what is wrong with advertising someone's book if you found it insightful. Could you please explain to me the problem? I'll hold off on telling anybody about any books that I like until you do, thanks.

Re:This IS traditional education for Americans

[Belial6]

First, you are right.

Second, one problem with recommending Gatto's book, which I have seen a lot recently on Slashdot, is that it brings on the information too strong. Much of it is obviously correct. Much of it is verifiable correct. Unfortunately, it undermines most peoples basic belief system. This means that it comes across like a book that explains to fundamentalist Christians why their entire religion is a lie.

What this means is that those who would like bring down the target institutions will take the whole book as gospel irrelevant of where it is correct, and where it isn't, and those that unquestionably believe in the institution book targets will deny the whole thing, irrelevant of where it is correct, and where it isn't.

First things first

[cdrguru]

The problem in the USA today isn't a lack of quality teaching and quality schools or even a lack of quality curriculum. It is an attitude that doing well in school is for social outcast nerds and to be cool you have to ignore school and learning in general.

This is popularized by the hip-hop culture as well as other aspects of the currrent pop culture.

Contrast this with Asian children that are expected - no, required - to do well in school by their parents. Who is in the top of nearly all technology-oriented university programs? Asians. Why? Because they are getting the grades and it counts. Both for just "learning stuff" and getting a job later.

We can continue with a culture that will obviously lead to a nation like Idiocracy. Or we can change things. Feel-good programs where everyone gets a prize and self-directed learning isn't going to make the kind of change that is needed.

Re:First things first

[Archangel Michael]

The problem in the USA today isn't a lack of quality teaching and quality schools or even a lack of quality curriculum. It is an attitude that doing well in school is for social outcast nerds and to be cool you have to ignore school and learning in general.

It most certainly is the teaching quality. I work in education, and while there are quite a few good and excellent teachers there, there are plenty of teachers that shouldn't be. It is like dodging raindrops.

The current system also a system designed for Industrial age, and not the current post industrial age. We teach things in a manner which preps kids to be factory automatons rather than self organizing information age data processors. Mr Mitra has stumbled upon a new method for preparing kids to be functional adults in the post industrial information age. I've been touting his methods ever since I first saw his presentation.

The attitudes of kids you describe is also rampant. But it isn't helped by requiring those kids be in classrooms to disrupt the kids that want to be there. I've seen classrooms where the teacher spends 1/2 of their time dealing with kids who don't want to be there. Which is completely unfair to everyone involved.

Then there are the parents that think the world is out to get their kids and everything is everyone else's fault not theirs or their kids. Or parents who just don't care. Or no parents to speak of at all (only professional daycare providers).

Suffice it to say, the problems with modern educational system can be spread around to a myriad of places. We just don't have the guts to do anything about the problems as they exist for fear of hurting someone's feelings or fear of breaking the status quo.

Re:First things first

[blahplusplus]

"The problem in the USA today isn't a lack of quality teaching and quality schools or even a lack of quality curriculum."

The real problem is the whole idea of school, the idea that you can just throw kids randomly into a prison like system and get them to sit still and "learn" is totally flawed from the outset.

Schools by their very nature KILL CURIOSITY. I think most slashdotters can attest to the fact that school and learning has to be approached from ones own innate curiousness about things and can't be brow beaten into ones head without severe damage.

Taught myself computers this way

[Stele]

I was in 5th grade and our school had just gotten a TRS-80, the first computer I ever saw. Nobody in the school knew what to do with it - it just sat in the library. I and another kid in my class had reputations for being smart and inquisitive - the principal actually brought me broken radios and tape players and things to take apart.

Anyway, the school would send me and the other kid to the library once a day while the class did other stuff, and we taught ourselves to program the computer together, figuring out how to get the tape player working, storing our programs, etc.

That set me up for the rest of my life. In 10th grade (1986-7) I taught myself C while the rest of the class learned Pascal. By the time I got to college I knew more about programming than most of the professors.

Dropped out in 1992 and the rest is history.

I am grateful to the school system I was in (SW Virginia no less) to encourage and support my interest in such gadgetry, and to have the opportunity to learn things at my own pace. It works when done right.

Re:Taught myself computers this way

[Eil]

I think it's great that you were actively encouraged by your school's faculty to learn about things that you were interested in at an early age. There should be more of this. Understand, however, that your case is the extremely rare exception. The high school that I attended had computers, but it was always made very clear that they were only to be used under direct adult supervision and only for completing assignments in class. That meant no games, no programming, no tinkering of any sort. The computers weren't even networked to each other, let alone the Internet. The only satisfaction I ever got out of my high school computer classes was that after a while, my classmates started asking me for help when stuck on something, even when the teacher was standing right there.

American public schools are quite deliberately modeled after automobile assembly lines. Get the kids in, slap a minimum amount of knowledge on them, and get them out the door. In order for a student to really learn anything, they have to take the initiative do self-directed study on their own time. (Or hire a tutor, but that's not usually a realistic option for low- to middle-income families.)

who's qualified?

[Alan R Light]

Teaching yourself is fine, but very few people are capable of doing it properly without a lot of help.

We're naturally talking about people who are capable of doing so.

Apparently "people who are capable of doing so" includes slum kids in India. That may still exclude many, but it's more than "very few".

Re:who's qualified?

[HungryHobo]

Hell yes.
I know 2 or 3 people like this.

One of them is a college dropout who works all hours.
He's one of those busy people, you know the ones, from the saying "if you need something done give it to someone who's busy"

I mentioned 1 way hashes to him over a pint when we were chatting about a problem he was having in work to do with checking for duplicate details without violating data protection.
A few weeks later I chat to him and he's educated himself about hash functions beyond what would be covered in a CS degree.

I sat down with him one afternoon and went through the basics of how to write a simple "hello world" program and compile it and how to do simple loops.
just enough to get past the "where do I start" bit with coding.
6 months later he's writing applications for his office.

I mentioned data structures and various search algortihms to him when he was talking about how his code was always far far slower than the professional coders stuff.
I fully expect him to find out next time I talk to him that he's gone off and educated himself about datastructures and algorithms beyond what a normal cs course covers.

He'll go far in life... or, considering the workload he takes on, go nuts.... but probably go far in life.
He has the tallent and drive to educate himself while working 2 jobs and isn't afraid of learning.

Re:who's qualified?

[Wonko the Sane]

Being able to 'teach yourself' is one of those 'x-factors'.

Being able to "teach yourself" is normal. That's what human beings evolved to do and children start doing it from day 1 of life.

The reason you believe this skill is so rare is because modern educational methods were specifically designed to inhibit this natural ability. See John Taylor Gatto's book linked else where in the thread.

TED talk by Sugata Mitra

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

A few pointers for self-learning

[presidenteloco]

When you are ready, study the more formal parts of modern philosophy
(epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science), to acquire the
meta-level skills necessary to understand what knowledge is, and what
its properties are, before you try to load up on too much specific knowledge.

Also, study some westernized writings on Zen philosophy, to the level at which you
understand its relationship to the other above-mentioned aspects of modern
philosophy. When you understand the significance of the dividing of the world
by the cutting strokes of the knife, you may be ready to start learning a few specifics.

As an Autodidact...

[l0ungeb0y]

I would recommend keeping the kids offline as much as possible. Wikipedia and Google can lead you to a wealth of information, but the distractions online are endless. Also, the information on most sites is questionable. Besides, the library will have many kid activities that helps socialise them with others which is just as helpful as the books they have in helping shape your child's mind. So while the internet is a tool, it should be kept as a secondary utility for watching informative how-to videos on youtube and getting cliff-notes from wikipedia and other sites.

So here's what to do: Get your kid to the library, provide them a library card and let them go to the library whenever they want.
Here's what not to do: DO NOT FORCE them to go, DO NOT give them assignments, DO NOT make yourself a part of it

If you want to assist them or steer them towards self-education fine, but do it by LISTENING to them when they choose to talk to you, then ASKING them intelligent questions about what they are talking about. Try to get them to run out of answers about what they talking about so they are hungry to learn more FOR THEIR own edification. But, take it no further. Structuring it, controlling it or tampering with it in any way takes the "self" part and throws it right out the window and will likely kill whatever interest your kid has in it because now you're a part of it and their freedom is diminished. When the parent becomes directly involved, no matter how good the intention, what was once a fun hobby for the kid can quickly become yet another form of "school" or chore.

Also, their interests may come and go or change entirely, I know they did for me. Entire subjects would change after I exhausted them or they became boring. Sometimes entire months would go by where I would only read fiction and play with friends and watch TV. But, then I'd get going on something and take up that interest. So don't expect it to be consistant.. let the kid guide his interests freely.

Most importantly, if your kid just isn't into it and would rather play with friends or watch TV, so be it. Let it be.
Remember: The majority of people are not inclined for rigorous self-education, in fact, I'd say it's a trait of a select minority.

homeschooling

[d3matt]

More or less, this is how homeschooling works for thousands of students nationwide. Parents aren't really teachers, they're facilitators.