Review: A Powerful Tale Of Transformation Through Learning
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 13, 2013
This marvelous booklet will restore your faith in the power of youths to undo the messes created by those who preceded them.About ten years ago I enjoyed an account by Wired Magazine editor Kevin Kelly, "Out Of Control," a deep dive look at the emergence of collective decision-making processes that he named "Hive Mind." I'm not smart enough to summarize the book, but generally it is an effort to delve into the power of many minds working in some sort of synchronicity that belies our usual belief that we are totally individualized thinking beings, separate from one another. In many situations, a kind of human consensus emerges almost as though one mind alone had taken charge.Something somewhat similar is happening here. Ten years ago, a teacher in India and his buddies put a computer connected to the Internet in the opening of an exterior wall of a building in a grim New Delhi ghetto. Then they left it. No instructions, no supervision, no nothing.What happened next is the story, indeed, the miracle, of this book, and it will blow you away. Suffice it to say that the teacher quickly discovered that kids from desperately poor slums, badly educated, could, WITHOUT INSTRUCTION, figure out a great deal about computers and how to use them on their own. And, more important, that they could learn from the experience and thereby become better able to work within a complex world.Great book. Very upbeat. Highly recommended.