Sugata Mitra interview: ‘A reduction in resources can cause something nice to happen’

Fifteen years ago, Sugata Mitra, a scientist from Calcutta, conceived of an interesting experiment. He went to a slum in Delhi, installed a computer into a public wall in the manner of a cash machine, then he waited to see what would happen.

As he had expected, the local children crowded round and began to experiment — but what he had not expected was how very quickly the kids mastered the basics of computing and began to search the internet for new areas of study.

Professor Mitra was astonished by how fast the kids learnt, especially given that they hardly spoke English. But as he observed the group, he realised one reason for their success: they were co-operating; reading in groups; solving problems together.

Mitra called his ‘hole in the wall’ computers self-organised learning environments (Soles) and went on to set up many others around the world. Soles and the research they gave rise to allowed thousands of poor Indian children to have an education, but Mitra also believes that, with a couple of tweaks, his methods could help to close the gap between state and public schools in Britain.

Professor Mitra is 62 now, a professor at Newcastle University, but when I meet him still speaks with great excitement about his Soles. Over and over again, the children who encounter them have exceeded his expectations, he says. He tells me that to test the limits of the method, he once issued computers loaded with information in English about biotechnology, to a group of Tamil-speaking 12-year-olds. ‘When I came back two months later, the children told me that they hadn’t learnt anything,’ Mitra says. ‘I was disappointed until one girl added: “Apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA contributes to genetic disease, we’ve understood nothing else”.