Distance Learning: The "Big Society" Meets Globalization in Online Math Lessons

November 22, 2010 

Based in northern India, online mathematics tutor Munish Kumar has clients all over the world. In a recent article in The Economist, he says pampered middle-class children make up a good slice of his income, but that might be changing with a new community initiative to help children living in south London's public housing complexes.

Community activists on the Doddington estate, a rough public housing complex in south London, want to incorporate online, one-on-one math tutoring to help children who are on the point of giving up on the subject.  According to The Economist, "Every day, Marie Hanson, a single mother who runs a community project on the Doddington estate, sees the harm caused to clients who decided the subject was beyond them at school." Clients include teenage boys who she says become "angry inside" when they have trouble with numbers and single mothers who have "a debilitating lack of competence with arithmetic that hampers their judgment and prospects."

“You have to see it to believe it,” says Ms Hanson, recalling children squabbling for a turn solving sums online. They are transported into their “own little world”, where they aren’t embarrassed to make mistakes.

The Economist also interviews Rebecca Stacey, assistant head of a north London school that is already incorporating Kumar's lessons. "Distance matters little to today's children," she said. "For them, the world is already local."

Read the full story here.

Source: The Economist (November 18, 2010)