Atanu Dey on India’s Development

A couple of education related TED videos

Richard Baraniuk: Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning. (Filmed Feb 2006)

Jonathan Drori: Why we don’t understand as much as we think we do. (Filmed Feb 2007)

[Thanks to Manish Dharod for the links.}

September 7, 2008 - Posted by | Education, Videos

2 Comments »

  1. To add to this Atanu, I think you must read “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich which is available here.

    Here’s a sample to get you interested.

    Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.

    Comment by navneet | September 18, 2008 | Reply

  2. Atanu, have you read any books or essays by Rabindranath Tagore that explain his thinking on education and learning?

    Also, the ideas in the second talk somewhat contradict your other post where you raved about the physics models available on the internet. While such websites can be useful, they are no substitute for hands-on learning or interaction among students, and teachers in an actual classroom.

    Comment by Amit | September 18, 2008 | Reply


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