April 1, 2014
Curator’s Note: Thanks to the Internet Archive, I found this long-lost article by Dr. Papert written for the March 1981 issue Creative Computing magazine. (Creative Computing played a major role in my adolescent development as I learned to program through 7th-12th grade). Enjoy the first of many excerpts to be shared from this article. – […]
August 22, 2012
“We need chutzpah to face down those people who say “ Hey who are we to say technology should dictate what children learn, that technology should dictate the curriculum. No! Technology should be the tool for implementing the curriculum. It’s other people who dictate it. Who do you think you are to say what children […]
April 30, 2012
“Culturally shared negative attitudes toward teachers are nour ished by personal experiences. As a rebellious child I saw teachers as the enemy. Then, with time, these feelings merged with a theoretical position which had the illogical consequence of further demonizing teachers by identifying them with the roles that School forced on them. I disliked School’s […]
April 2, 2012
“The role of the teacher is to become a co-learner. Eventually, teachers, that is to say, adults with experience of learning will join with children in learning new materials that neither of them has known in the past. And this is the best way to learn, to learn with somebody else who is already experienced.” […]
March 26, 2012
“Many aspects of School block teachers from the fulfillment of functioning in a class as co-learners.” Papert, S. (1993) The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. NY: Basic Books. Page 67. Tweet This Post
March 22, 2012
“In Mindstorms (Papert, 1980), I asked (choosing one out of a vast number of possible examples) why the quadratic equation of the parabola is included in the mathematical knowledge every educated citizen is expected to know. Saying that it is “good math” is not enough reason: The curriculum includes only a minute sliver of the […]
February 14, 2012
“The best learning is learning that is embraced and enjoyed. Children love to learn until they are taught otherwise. Indeed even then, while most people may hate being taught, I believe that everyone, especially every child, always likes learning.” Papert, S. (1996) The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. Atlanta: Longstreet Press. page 51. […]
January 26, 2012
“Imagine a party of time travelers, among them a group of surgeons and a group of school teachers, who came from the last century to see how things are done in our days. Think of the bewilderment of the surgeons when they find themselves in the operating room of a modem hospital! The nineteenth-century surgeons […]
October 25, 2011
“Let’s go back to Dewey for a moment. Intellectual growth, he often told us, must be rooted in the child’s experience. But surely one of the fundamental problems of the school is how to extend or use the child’s experience. It must be understood that “experience” does not mean mere busy work: two children who […]
October 20, 2011
Teachers were once among the most respected members of their communities — often the most respected. This position is slipping as schools deteriorate and lose their social function. Some visions of the role of technology in education, for example, the image of the best teacher as a distant teacher, further undermine respect for teachers and […]
