You all know what 12 x 12 equals. By heart, by memory, by rote. But what if you were asked, what is 13 x 16? Quick, by rote, by memory! Do you know the answer? Why do you know the first answer is 144, but not the second one (which is 208…I used a calculator!)?
Sugata Mitra, an Indian thinker, Physics and Chemistry Professor, and winner of the TEDTalk 2011 $1 million prize for his talk “Computing in the Clouds,” responded to Sir Ken Robinson’s famous TEDTalk, which claimed “schools are broken!” Mitra argued that schools are not broken but are functioning exactly as they were designed to 200 years ago—to provide cogs for the British Empire.
