Self-organizing Systems of Education

This video from the ALT-C conference in Nottingham in 2010 shows Sugata Mitra talking about his experiments with self-organizing learning systems , that is, students in small groups doing self-directed learning with computers.  His speculation at the end is interesting: “education is a self-organizing system and learning is emergent.”

For some reason this blog is not allowing me to embed the video, but you can find it here.

Questions come to mind immediately. Would it work in an affluent society with a strong cultural leaning toward teacher-centered education? Would it work with language learning? And would any administration ever be willing to take a chance and try something like this?