Children Can Be Their Own Teachers: Disruptive innovation in education

Malawi, in southeastern Africa, is one of the world’s least-developed nations. Many of its children are among the roughly 250 million worldwide who are not in school of any kind. Countless others are among those who attend school but do not learn to read or write. A look inside schools in Lilongwe shows why: many children attend classes with 200 or more students; they sit on the floor as a teacher holds up a single book.

These are daunting circumstances. Yet despite these conditions, the most audacious—and arguably important—initiative occurring in education worldwide is taking place in the school we visited, along with a host of other sites in the developing world.