Social Entrepreneurship Field Visit: Arvind Gupta

September 11th the Social Entrepreneurship class visited Arvind Gupta, of www.arvindguptatoys.com, who makes toys that teach scientific principles out of trash and easily accessible items. His work also includes creating videos, providing PDFs of old, useful textbooks, and compiling various other educational materials which are available for free on his website.

Here are some of the toys that he created:

Simple motor using a magnet, battery, safety pins, and a coil of wire.

A model of the digestive system using trash.

A toy that demonstrates the strength of triangles using matchsticks and bicycle tubing.

In our class we've been talking about what social entrepreneurship is, and more or less our definition of a social entrepreneur is leadership skills and a mission for social change. Arvind Gupta is a great example of that; he's full of stories and several of my classmates mentioned that they were back learning science in grade school again.

Telling us a story about how children can create engineering marvels.

One problem that came up, though, that I suspect will be reoccurring with regards to social entrepreneurship, is that it's hard to see how well the work is actually doing what it's meant to. From Google and site statistics, the people working with him all know how many downloads and videos have been watched, but whether those children who are getting access are the targets (poor children without quality schools, especially girls) or otherwise already privileged kids (ones that already go to the best English-language schools) is impossible to tell.

A classroom full of girls learning about science toys.

We did, however, get to see the kids learning while we were in the building. Admittedly they were more interested in us than the demonstration at the time, but it was cool to see that, at least, those hundred-ish girls were all learning science. Given the sexist attitudes many people in India and across the globe have toward women in science, that was pretty cool.

I was also reminded of my high school physics experience with Mr. Tuttle, which was very hands-on and derive-the-information-yourself. This is one point that I think I diverged from the other visiting students and even from Arvind Gupta himself. The toys don't have any sort of way to measure output, which means that while kids will have fun and see some scientific principles at work, they don't have the ability to help them figure out, say, conservation of energy, momentum, or mass. The hope I have is that, perhaps through the free books available on www.arvindguptatoys.com, kids will take their curiosity and go off and learn Science, the scientific method and the drive to proof rather than to heuristic, and not just being content with cool toys.

Interactive question: Have you ever been inspired by a teacher to do something you'd once thought you couldn't? More practically, Arvind Gupta and co. are looking for volunteers who know languages to translate textbooks and videos. They could use your help! They have many videos in Spanish, Marathi, and Hindi, but are more limited for others.