Sugata Mitra wrote an article published in the Observer on Saturday 15 June 2013 entitled ‘Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education’ in which he said:
‘We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past … A child being taught the history of Vikings in England says to me: ‘’We could have found out all that in five minutes if we ever needed to’.
Mitra’s famous ‘Hole in the Wall’ project in India, his TED Talk, and his many other public statements about the need for schooling to be significantly remodelled around using the internet have led to much debate, including this quote from him:
‘Knowing is obsolete. People often think I’m saying that knowledge is obsolete, which I’m not. I’m saying putting knowledge in your head – that’s obsolete because you can know anything when you need to know it via the internet’.
David Didau has written a detailed and persuasive repudiation of the Mitra knowing-is-obsolete world-view, which you can read here:
https://learningspy.co.uk/myths/is-it-just-me-or-is-sugata-mitra-an-irresponsible-charlatan/
My own take on the Mitra message is presented as five questions:
My Five Big Questions for Sugata Mitra
1. Where does the ‘knowledge’ presented via the internet come from?
2. Where does the knowledge needed to make sensible use of the internet come from? The knowledge needed to search well, and to select what we need from the bewildering plethora of ‘information’ available.
3. Assuming we manage to find something relevant via the internet: what will we use to think about what we have found? To read it, to analyse it, to reflect on it and so on.
4. How does knowledge grow in our brains? That is, what does new knowledge stick to?
5. And finally, what do the well-known people who advocate not-filling-our-heads-with-inconsequential-stuff-but-just-use-the-internet-when-you-need-it appear to have in common?
Here are my answers to these questions:
- The vast array of facts available via the internet have been put there by people. People who have learned these things; people who have these facts – this knowledge – inside their heads. And let’s not forget, the internet contains a huge amount of stuff that isn’t facts: wild guesses, flimsy suppositions, blatant lies, distortions, simple viewpoints, and so on. We all need to be wary of non-facts and falsehoods and bigotry masquerading as factual knowledge, and knowing quite a lot of stuff helps us with discrimating, doesn’t it?
- We can, and should, teach people how to use the internet effectively. Knowledge is required to search well and to think about what we find.
- We use knowledge to think about things. This is the key point: without foundational knowledge, there’s nothing for new learning to stick to. And the firmer those foundations are, the better new knowledge will stick. The more we know, the more we can learn, and the easier we can learn it. This is why I would struggle to learn quantum physics, compared with someone who has just done Physics A level – they already know a lot more physics than I do; stuff sticks to stuff.
- Knowledge grows in our brains by adding layers on to what we already know. So, of course, if there’s nothing ‘in there’ already, because we are relying on finding it when we need it via the internet, we dramatically restrict our ability to learn more and learn quickly.
- It seems to me that the people who advocate just looking stuff up when we need it are people who themselves have had a strong ‘classical education’, and the qualifications that go with it; they already know a lot of stuff themselves, so it’s all very well for them to advocate that young people should just ask lots of questions and collaborate using the internet to find out the answers, but not to bother with the tiresome business of actually trying to store things in their long-term memory – to, ah, actually learn it.
I find the argument that knowing is obsolete ridiculous. To a great extent, we are what we know. Much of what we call ‘intelligence’ is about knowing stuff. And our ability to learn is hugely affected by what we already know. I leave the last words to ED Hirsch, who writes them more articulately than I do:
‘Those who repudiate a fact-filled curriculum on the grounds that kids can always look things up miss the paradox that de-emphasising factual knowledge actually disables children from looking things up effectively. To stress process at the expense of factual knowledge actually hinders children from learning to learn. Yes, the internet has placed a wealth of information at our fingertips. But to be able to use that information – to absorb it, to add to our knowledge – we must already possess a storehouse of knowledge. That is the paradox disclosed by cognitive research’.
Mark Patterson
