The RCEF Blog 博客

I’m writing from Hong Kong at the Clinton Global Initiative Asia, the first regional meeting President Clinton has held to bring together government, business, and civil society in Asia. Kiel Harell and I are representing RCEF (armed with Marco’s great brochures) to meet potential partners and learn about new innovations in Asian education.

There were some excellent panels today. In one, Zheng Hong, the founder of the “Dandelion School,” a middle school for the children of migrant workers in Beijing, spoke about the “family-like” relationships that have grown between teachers and students. Teachers needing to become “second parents,” and mentors to students was a common theme brought up by NGOs working in Cambodia, Laos, and China.

The challenge of finding and keeping dedicated people to serve students who need them the most was also discussed. Professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University proposed a startling alternative to this widespread problem: “Teachers who can be replaced by a machine, should be.” He says he’s not anti-teachers, but does believe that self-organized small groups of students have a strong potential to educate themselves, with just a computer and internet connection. He bases that on years of experimentation with putting computers in places where kids have never seen one before–let alone have the language skills or training to use it. Pretty soon, however, groups of kids working together always figure it out themselves and start learning in new ways that can be more engaging and effective than what their existing teacher offers.

His research is very interesting, especially as RCEF contemplates the degree to which to promote technology use in teaching in rural classrooms. What do you think? Can the Internet be a substitute for a teacher? Does using the internet need to be an integral part of the way rural students learn nowadays?

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