Learning and talent is all supposed to hinge on ease of instruction.
But what if you made learning difficult?
And what if there was no apparent benefit or payoff?
One Indian researcher ended up doing just that, quite by mistake…
In the year 1999, Sugata Mitra occupied an office at NIIT (a computer-training institute that has trained over five million students). And his office overlooked an urban slum in New Delhi.
A wall separated the slum from the office
So Sugata and his colleagues made a hole in the wall, and placed a computer in that hole. The monitor and the touch pad faced the slum. And the computer had a decently fast connection and was connected to the Internet.
Then Sugata and his colleagues sat back and watched.
What would happen next?
About eight hours later, an eight year-old child and six year-old girl were browsing the Internet.
Now the browser was in English, and technically at least, the kids didn’t speak the language.
But what if they were somehow helped?
There they were browsing the Internet, but hey, this was an urban slum. It’s possible that they were helped by someone with an understanding of computers, and/or an understanding of the foreign language.
This experiment was bringing up more questions than answers
So Sugata headed off to Shivpuri. Now Shivpuri is reasonably remote in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
They put another computer in the wall, and it was found by a 13-year old school dropout.
Yet in eight minutes, having never seen a browser before, he was busy browsing. By the evening, over seventy (yes, seventy) kids had begun to browse (again with no prior knowledge of browsers).
By the year 2000, the experiment had gone one step further.
Sugata took the experiment to a village called Madantusi, near Lucknow, in India.
Now if you know India, even just a little bit, you’ll know that English is all pervasive. Yes, the accents and the pronunciation is a bit different, but you can make yourself understood in English.
Well, the village of Madantusi didn’t seem to have an English teacher at all.
And once again, the computer was placed in the wall, this time with CDs available. And no Internet connection.
And the computer was left there for three whole months.
When Sugata came back three months later he was amazed
The little kids turned to him and said they needed a faster processor. And a better mouse.
How did the kids learn what they needed?
Amazingly, though all the terms and the information was in English, the kids taught themselves to understand the ‘code’ of English.
The kids were now using over 200 English words in conversations with each other.
In fact, in many instances, when the computers were hooked up to the Internet, the kids would search for a website that would teach them the English alphabet.
Are you stunned?
You should be.
Not only was the concept of the computer alien to most of the kids.
But the language was the equivalent of you reading an unknown language, like Swahili.
And yet, the kids quickly worked it out.
So how did they work it out?
Were they more talented?
As it turns out, they were not.
The kids were just kids from the village, who’d found something interesting.
So how did they pick up this talent of browsing, finding websites, and speaking a foreign language?
You see, talent is a matter of understanding code.
If code is simple to follow, then you understand and apply it.
But as it turns out, even when things are difficult, the human brain is able to work things out.
So why do we not become as talented as we should be?
Parents. And teachers.
The people who believe that we’re born to do certain things.
And not other things.
The people who tell us that nature, and family and heritage determines talent.
Time and time again, these parents and teachers tell us who we are.
And what we should be doing.
And what we can’t do.
But as it turned out, in this experiment there was no parent. Or teacher.
The hole in the wall computer was manned only by curious kids, eager to learn.
And to teach each other the ‘code’.
And time and again, they succeeded, across the length and breadth of India.
No matter what the level of education, or language, or diversity. The experiment played out almost the same way time and time again. And a whole bunch of kids became magically talented.
Which makes you wonder, eh?
Are parents, and teachers, and our school system…who believe in talent, the factor that kill our talents?
Hmmm…
Note: Watch the video below that details the experiment. If you’re reading this on email, you’ll have to go to https://brainaudit.com to watch the video. If you’re online, you can already see the video right under this line.
Could you read maps with your feet?
That’s not quite how we read maps, eh?
Some of us need directions, and need to close our eyes.
Some of us need to see a picture. And print the picture.
Some of us need explicit left-right directions.
But what if you weren’t any of those people mentioned above?
What if you read maps with your feet?
Gillian Lynne is a dancer.
Back in the 1930’s she was doing miserably at school.
The pictures didn’t help. The words didn’t help.
Obviously, nothing the teachers did or said got Gillian’s attention.
And she spiralled into, what we’d today call, a ‘challenged child.’
She was unfocused.
Fidgety.
Refused to learn.
So her mother took her to a doctor
Luckily the doctor wasn’t a teacher.
He turned on the radio, sneaked out of the room, and then asked Gillian’s mother to look at what Gillian was doing.
So what was she doing?
She was dancing.
Gillian didn’t think with her head. She thought with her feet.
All those words, and pictures, and blah-blah that was being taught at school was completely wasted on Gillian.
Because her method of learning, wasn’t words, or picture, or lecture-related.
It was all about dance.
Now here’s the sad story: Gillian went on to be famous
She went on to join the Royal Ballet.
She worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at West End, and was cast in roles on British Television.
She was the choreographer on the world-famous Andrew Lloyd Weber musical: Cats.
And then The Phantom of the Opera.
She was the director and choreographer of the Muppet Show.
She started her own dance school.
She did this and did that.
So why do I call it sad?
What if Gillian weren’t famous?
What if Gillian didn’t do what she did to become famous, but simply settled down for the rest of her life in the suburbs?
What then?
There are six billion talented people on the planet, all being fed with the school-system of teaching.
And for all practical reasons, at least five billion are getting the wrong instructions.
Which of course brings up the question
Do we really have dumb kids?
Do we really have dumb adults?
Do we really think that there are un-creative people out there?
Do we really think that Gillian couldn’t read maps by dancing on the map with her feet?
The method of teaching is wrong.
Yes, wrong.
We’re all fed with this same funnel of words. Mostly words.
The biggest chunk of your education is a matter of reading a book.
But what if someone could teach you through cartoons?
Or what if someone could teach you through music?
Or what if someone could teach you through dance?
The method of teaching is wrong.
Has always been. Well, it’s been right for some and wrong for many.
And it’s because we’ve never recognised the most important factor of all.
The factor that some of us, can indeed read maps best with our feet.
So how do you think best?
Post your answer in the comments below
Some people need time to take a decision
They need to sleep on their decision, before making up their minds.
So why do some people act so quickly, whereas others ruminate, and munch over their thoughts?
And why is this munching so contrary to the normal working of our brains?
Let’s take an example: Let’s say I threw a rock at you.
What do you do? You take a decision. That’s what you do. You don’t have time to analyse the rock, the velocity etc. You simply get out of the way. Most of the decisions we take from moment to moment are instantaneous. We decide to walk faster or slower. Cross the road or stay on this side of the road. Instantly, we’re able to take these decisions. Why?
Because there’s enough information.
Not less.
Not more.
Enough.
But we’ve been trained to sit down and analyse the worst ramifications.
We’re doing #$%$^# research. Of course, there are zillions of ways to slice and dice anything, so research, at the very core helps. But add to the research; layer after layer; and you get to a state of confusion.
So yes, you never have to sleep on anything.
Try it today.
Try a YES or NO option for any decision.
You’ll find it’s easy.
So what do top performers have that others don’t?
Top performers are able to take decisions based on Yes or No.
Because in every situation it’s impossible to tell the outcome.
Yes, impossible.
You can do all the planning in the world, and the outcome may turn out to be completely different.
e.g. You’re buying a house. You have a great job.
You can pay the mortgage. You do all your homework. You get the mortgage. You move into the house.
A week later you have a $200,000 mortgage. And the ability to pay it.
Then your boss comes up to you and tells you you’re going to be made redundant. (That’s my story when we moved to New Zealand).
So yes, I could sleep on it all I wanted.
I would either own the house. Or not.
I needed enough information, and then needed some action.
Training yourself to take YES/NO decisions is the first step.
Sleeping on it, doesn’t solve the problem
Sleeping on it, simply causes more confusion, in many a case.
If you want to take a quick decision get all the relevant facts together.
Choose the information that’s most relevant.
And then take a decision.
Because too much information clutters up your decision-making ability.
As a result you do NOTHING.
Which is a problem in itself. 🙁 Try this exercise:If you were a citizen of the US, who would you vote for? Obama or McCain? And how would more information help you decide?
Give them a piece of paper. And some crayons.
Then ask them to draw.
Notice what happens next.
They start drawing.
Every single three-year old draws.
Now try this same test with a group of kids that are about eight or nine years old.
And something weird happens
Suddenly the room is split up into kids who say they can’t draw vs. kids who can.
So what happened between three and eight?
And what happens between eight and eighteen (or eighty for that matter?)
How is it possible that you cannot find a three-year old who can’t draw, and then suddenly they’re all art-challenged?
