Abstract

In his recent article "Advent of Google means we must rethink our approach to education", Sugata Mitra argues that our education system needs to change. He suggests that the existence of modern technologies such as Google make the skills of the past obsolete. For Mitra, the only reason we continue to teach skills such as longhand multiplication is because we have some sort of romantic attachment to the past. In this short article I respond to his central claim that we should replace the Intellectual Traditionalist form of education with a new system. I argue that Mitra description of the Intellectual Traditionalist system is a strawman. Further, I argue that it would be a mistake to replace Intellectual Traditionalism with a constructivist pedagogy.