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Kieran Egan

Is it just me or is Sugata Mitra an irresponsible charlatan?

2016-09-28T17:57:14+01:00November 23rd, 2015|myths|

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power. Ralph Waldo Emerson When I first saw physicist, Sugata Mitra speak about his Hole in the Wall experiments in India I was astonished. Not only was he as  self-deprecatingly warm and funny as Sir Ken Robinson on a major charm offensive, the content of what he was saying blew any of SKR's woolly rhetoric out of the water. Basically, his claim was, is, that children can teach themselves anything. All they need is access to the internet and teachers to stay the heck away [...]

Some tentative thoughts about evidence in education

2014-08-30T16:31:39+01:00August 29th, 2014|Featured|

To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer. Robert A. Heinlein I've been thinking hard about the nature of education research and I'm worried that it might be broken. If I develop a theory but have no evidence for it then it is dismissed as 'mere speculation'. "Show me the evidence!" comes the crowded shout, and currently in the sphere of education evidence is all. But can we really trust the evidence we're offered? Clearly, sometimes we can. I don't want to be [...]

I ♥ rote learning

2014-08-30T23:17:04+01:00August 26th, 2014|learning|

Memory is the cabinet of the imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and, the council chamber of thought. St. Basil I've been reading and enjoying Getting it Wrong from the Beginning: Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget in which Kieran Egan launches a blistering attack on the tenets of progressivism. What's particularly interesting about it is that it's written by a man who describes himself as "someone who has considerable sympathy with progressive ideals." (p6) I'll write more on the general and fascinating thrust of the book another time. Today I want just to pick up [...]

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