Radical New Teaching Method

Whenever I see a headline such as this, I am immediately cynical — more false hype, no doubt.  But when I read the Wired article sent to me by Kirsten Haugen, "How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses," I was amazed.  The article tells the story of Jose Urbina Lopez Primary School that sits next to a dump in Matamoras, Mexico, "a sun-baked city that is a flash point in the war on drugs."  People in Matamoras call the school un lugar de castigo — "a place of punishment."  Yet in 2012, ten students from a single class in this school placed in the 99.99th percentile for the entire country in a national standardized exam.

What happened is that the teacher, Juarez Correa, decided to give up on traditional education and engage in a student-driven approach where the students decided what they wanted to know and simply worked on their own to figure it out.  Similar approaches, inspired by Sugata Mitra in India, involved the same approach with students surfing the Internet for answers.  Correa's school had no computers, but the students' eagerness to research was just as robust.  

If you, too, are cynical, I invite you to read the article and share your reactions.

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