What do students really need from teachers?

It seems silly to question the idea that we need "highly qualified" teachers in every classroom; people who are experts at the subjects they are assigned to teach, but who also are  experts in child development, in classroom management and a host of other things. They have to have the personality and drive to steer their students -- naturally inclined to laziness and distractability -- to excellence.

But according to a new e-book I'm reading, even I could help your child learn calculus or bioengineering or a host of subjects -- provided I got out of the way.

In the book, "Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discovering the Transformational Power of Self-Organized Learning," author Sugata Mitra uses evidence gathered from his Hole in the Wall Project to argue for "minimally invasive education" -- learning environments in which teachers act more as facilitators than experts.

[pullout_quote credit="" align="left"]Hence, the teacher's role becomes bigger and stranger than ever before: She must ask her “learners” about things she does not know herself. Then she can stand back and watch as learning emerges.[/pullout_quote]His support for the idea comes from the Hole in the Wall project, which made computers publicly available to impoverished children in rural India. Without any instruction, those children were able to teach themselves computer literacy, learning and sharing skills like creating and saving documents, using drawing and photo software, browsing the Internet, and more.

The success of that project led organizers to take the experiment one step further: to have the children, with the aid of an untrained adult facilitator, use computers to teach themselves difficult subjects like English or biotechnology. According to Mitra, self-directed children who had guidance only from an untrained facilitator performed equally well on tests over the subjects as children taught by experts in some of India's most elite schools.

Since then, Self-Organized Learning Environments have been created in classrooms in several countries, leading the author to conclude that an "excellent" teacher is one who stimulates student learning by asking big questions. All we have to do is teach children to read, to search for information and teach them a "rational system of belief" -- i.e. that they can learn about the world by asking and answering relevant questions. He writes: "Children who have these skills scarcely need schools as we define them today. They need a learning environment and a source of rich, big questions. Computers can give out answers, but they cannot, as of yet, make questions.

"Hence, the teacher's role becomes bigger and stranger than ever before: She must ask her “learners” about things she does not know herself. Then she can stand back and watch as learning emerges."

When properly designed (the book includes a step-by-step guide for starting school-based SOLEs), teachers don't even need to be in the room with the learning group, but can facilitate by remote. It's truly a groundbreaking idea.

And one worth exploring, as we continue to ask ourselves how to shake the dust off our old models of teaching and learning, how to make school relevant in a 21st Century world.