Reconciling our beliefs about the flawed nature of schooling with the need for education in the developing world is an ongoing dilemma for many unschoolers. It’s often the basis for the criticism “it’s okay for you to do, but…” There was, in fact, a spirited discussion on the topic about a year ago in the letters section of Natural Life Magazine. So I was recently pleased to learn about the work of Sugata Mitra, a scientist and education researcher from India. In 1999, he and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected computer, and settled back to watch what happened. (Sound familiar? His work inspired the novel that became Slumdog Millionaire.) What they observed was kids playing with the computer and, in the process, learning how to use it, and then teaching each other. Furthermore, they used their new skills to solve the daily problems of their lives. Subsequently, Mitra formalized the experiment into the Hole in the Wall project, which has demonstrated that self-directed, curiosity-based learning is not the prerogative of upper middle class white kids. Mitra, who is now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University in the UK, calls it “minimally invasive education” and suspects that his project is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what kids can learn in this manner.  There’s a talk on this subject by Mitra on the TED website.