We began this week a new mandate with one of Montreal’s leading high schools, the Collège Notre-Dame. Located across the street from the St-Joseph Oratory, the College is a venerable organization founded in 1869 by the Holy Cross Congregation. 

Since its beginnings, it has inspired several other schools through its educational achievements and constant innovation. More than 40 years ago, Montreal’s Notre-Dame was amongst the first (and is one the few remaining) schools to integrate mandatory, daily physical education in its pedagogical program. Following our first full day of work with this new partner, we began discussing and researching elements that point towards new models in early childhood education. 

One such reference is Sugata Mitra’s famous 2010 TED Talk, « New Experiments in self-teaching ». Starting with the context of developing countries, Mitra comes to the realization that, in every country on earth, there are places where good teachers won’t go. These areas are also those where poverty, violence and alienation are most prevalent. 

Mitra’s idea is most simple: put computers in such areas, connect them to the internet and leave them there to see. The children are left to discover the endless possibilities of contemporary broadband access. From creative expression to speech recognition, biotechnology and the principles of geometry, the Newcastle-based scholar has shown with little doubt that education is "a self organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon."

Mitra recounts the story of a class full of young non-English-speaking Indian teenagers who, left two months on their own with nothing but a computer and a full online set of references on biotechnology, autonomously learned the basic principles of DNA replication and genetic disease. The results of the experiment were submitted to a scientific publication, and one of the (anonymous) referees is quoted as having reviewed it as "too good to be true."

This goes to show that there is still much left to learn about the way we learn, and teach. There are endless possibilities for experimentation and further innovation in our classrooms. And while some recent experiments have failed miserably, one can be satisfied that, at least, some things are being tried, relentlessly. We will not be as lucky as Professor Mitra everytime. But once in a blue moon, something incredible will happen.