[00:00:00] Moderator: well, it really is a thrill to, for me to be back here. I told them yet for a fourth, this is the fourth SqueakfFest. Um, it’s such a pleasure to be working with Wade again and Carol Mann, and we sort of formed a meal before the organizing committee for this. And, um, we’ve gotten each other well, I’m not sure we would have conference calls early, early, early planning days.
If you’ve been the first call we were brainstorming, who can we get? That would be just really fantastic. And I think it might’ve been waived. Kim, do you think it might be able to have a seat miss it?
I can tell you that as you can imagine the demand and the requests for see where to speak. And I said, but I happened to have, you know, maybe a little bit of it inside. And like I said, I here, that would be absolutely fantastic. I know that, you know, everybody come to the summit, let me see what I can do.
So the good news, whether it’s an early, the other really good news is I think, I don’t know. I know Seymour has a special place in my heart kind of thing. I had the pleasure of knowing him for 20 years since starting my work with Alan Kay. And I have been as inspired as I I’m sure all of you have by Seymour’s words, both written and just verbal, personal conversation.
And we are so thrilled. We’re so, so lucky to have him come to this really small gathering. To speak to us all. So I know he continues to inspire and then we’ll introduce you on
[00:02:16] Seymour Papert: anyway, way back to
the mood talking about
Almost 40 years, almost 20 years
in those days, the seventies computers were pretty inaccessible things for kids. I remember hitting. And review a comment. One of the proposals for a computer based with kids would, the reviewer said
on. That could be a benefit to the children
who with a straight face. And that mine was seen back that it was. These to add themselves. These two people already do, firstly, this day would come when
we didn’t know how long it might take, but it was obvious that it would come. And I think most of us estimating them. We’re not too far off in the time course, but it wasn’t the time that it was important. It was that we knew it would come. And what was on our bond was that learning it wasn’t coordinating patient could be radically, deeply different in the context where.
You didn’t have computers as the primary DDM for work rather than pencil paper print, video. So we would engage in pretty fundamental questions. How could it really change
at the time Jane drinking began to happen better? I think not certainly not the way I’d anticipate. Um, what, until that anticipated was the what’s brought out in alcohol was a movie. If you haven’t seen it, you already should. I think it’s a bottle, not only about the environment, you probably weren’t. I didn’t think anything about, about global warming that didn’t already know, but I it’s got me thinking an overlarge about how one might go about advocating or fighting for a big, big change in the way people think.
And I think when we are engaged in education is of the same kind of magnitude, and maybe it’s a prerequisite to that. Maybe it meant to them to think different and to learn different before they can do a goal is trying to. Uh, trying to be written about and thinking about the environment, it’s a model.
Um, I don’t think we thought very much about that, about how to persuade the world. It just seemed as obvious. That if you could do things better, that would be adopted. What we didn’t anticipate think about is a metaphor that I’ve used often, and then go use this very dramatically in that, in that movie.
And the metaphor is a famous saying that, put a frog in cold water, gradually heat it up. The problem dying. This is rescue. Throw the frog into almost boiling water, you would jump out and save himself. And I think one thing that’s happened with computers have at the school world is that the frog and suddenly heating up water.
So as computers gradually came into the school, but the school will gradually adopted it, stabbed it itself and assimilated them. Now the time to take them up and make them part of the way it always did things. There are a lot of good analogies. One can use another one that I’ve often used is that what we’ve seen happen in the school world is it kind of manages to the biological defense mechanisms against foreign bodies into the immune system, sets out his arm to set up defense mechanisms that isolate any.
An intruder. And I think school has done this with, with the computer that is, it’s had time to sort of de D uh, revolutionize the state normally. So that the, all the talk in the education world is how to integrate this computer into school, how to integrate it into the curriculum. And behind that is the idea that school, as it is practiced, is it given the curriculum as it is established as a given, and it’s a computer that has to be modified and brought into align with it.
And that’s what they do. I, this is a radical difference from the point of view, the way that we were thinking as made as well before, basically before the great, exciting revolution of the micro computer, that really in one way show, we were right on the line. And another way undid did us for the moment.
So now the question is all, we had a point where we can go back to those days. All we, at a point where we can really reopen the question is the role of the computer to improve the system as it exists or overturn it. Does the computer serve the curriculum or does it make it obsolete? I think it’s clearly it makes it also obsolete.
And frankly, I mean, I’ve done that dissipated. Would it be such a long time, but the nature of the time has. They had to meet, to do a lot of thinking and constructive and useful thinking. Um, I drew thing into, uh, some fist, uh, probably this antidote probings in a paper that you would find on the website happened to all holding why school reform is impossible.
And, uh, I do think school reform is impossible. If school reform means what to do to be does that somebody has worked out as an alternative and that this is going to be imposed on the big system, small system. This school can’t happen. The system is too complex for that. Nobody can invent that change can happen.
But it has to happen in an evolutionary way. It has to, you ball can be made and imposed. I think this, I think this is something that needs to be theorized and already in that paper. But since then, I’ve complained about the habit of our, something about the. It’s this culture of that people writing about thinking about educational unit management, especially they simply the medicine.
Like I suppose everybody in this group is you believe in some version of what’s called constructivism Constructionism child centered and developmental education. So what is developmental education? Basically? It says don’t, you can teach children by telling them, listen, this is what you want to know. You do something.
Dynamic, you create the conditions where their thinking is going to develop. But interestingly, if you look at the papers that this can start the, uh, developmental educators write for the fellow educators, they tell them what to do. And so they contradicted themselves and their approach to educational change.
And this is the dilemma we need to get out of. We need to develop a new way of thinking about. How to produce change.
Statement can only happen in small steps, but the smallest steps have to be, I think two properties, first of all, there must be mindful in that both mindful then is women’s make out small steps with a big goal in mind. It’s very tempting for them to this over and over again. It’s very tempting when you think, gosh, there’s a school that isn’t a chance of getting those kids the opportunity to spend two, three hours a week doing something really exciting.
I’m going to do that. I’m trying to give up that up. So I started talking to the school about how it’s good for you to do this. And I kind of presented in a way. Wouldn’t be acceptable to that school, but slippery slope because presenting in a way that’s acceptable to the city system. You’re trying to tell the throw and then neutralize it myself becoming part of this neutralizing process.
Uh, I’ve often been quoted on this following incident, but haven’t Kay and I were both the keynote speakers at the world conference on computers and education in Sydney. I think it was module two or something somewhere in the early nineties. Uh, Adam did the opening keynote. It’s not that the closing keynote at my theory was this.
I hope this is the best conference, the last world conference on computers and in Japan, because the idea of having a conference on computers and education. Expensive kind of saved mentality. We are putting ourselves in the service of somebody else after all those other people that are going to conferences on paper in education, they just take it for granted until we take it for granted that computers are there as the lead for medium and spreadsheets, we ought to be serving their purposes.
if they’re waiting on having a conference, I think it’s the question is the tipping point. I’ll give the drug isn’t possible. I thought I’d throw that out at you and get feedback. Maybe now in discussion, maybe in emails or maybe indirectly, I might even hear about it, but in the thoughts you might have and the discussions you might have in mind and with your friends and colleagues and students, especially when you go home.
What really are the conditions for change. And I think that I would take a bet that most of you is doing very wonderful things with squeak with children, with ideas, probably spend much more time on thinking about what to do on this particular project that you’re waiting on your particular school or where you are then on the question of how can this translate into really changing it.
And what would it mean to really China?
And I would go to the inside here to shift the however much time you spent, how have you been distributed to a ton between these 2, 2 50 small towards spending more time on that big question? Because in a sense, it’s that big question that gives meaning real meaning to what you’re doing and the more immediate thing it’s easy to think.
It’s impossible. So. Uh, it’s worth, I’m going to throw a few random thoughts about why it’s on selling possible about not long before that time in 68. I made it, um, it was a movement and divided stepdaughter, not the state. It’s almost all in all over the world. There was the biggest systematic attempt to change the mathematics and science curriculum.
That’s able to be made. It was called the new math and it really was radical and really was widespread. And it really goes against any kind of easy idea that you can’t change this data. We might ask us how come was that it happened there and what lessons are to be done now? How come it happened then as an easy answer.
The Soviets had put up Sputnik as shocked Americans, particularly that, that somebody has a specialty. Those people could be ahead in any area of tech. And this came shortly after it’s during an atomic bomb test five years earlier, that will be experts. And it had predicted it was panic. And I did those countries have a sense of crisis.
They could do it. So the question is why, what sense of crisis is there another sense of process he had coming? How long is that for a moment? I think that he has been, this might be the obvious one. What do I, what went wrong with it? Well, partly when they realized it wasn’t really a threat of that sword, that the threat from the Soviets was not about that sort of thing.
This old calm down that stopped and some different way back to where they were before. But, uh, more interesting is that cruise, the many people seem to draw from that, that we tried to change it and it didn’t work. So it’s not changing terrible. In fact, the real medicine is it went off so much in exactly the wrong direction that the best formula I know for how to change mathematics is to go up and see what they didn’t do the exact opposite.
Now it wasn’t because it was stupid or wanted to. To, to, uh, do bad by kids it’s because they didn’t have the technology. And what they did was, as I said, go exactly in the wrong direction and I don’t have to pinpoint Josh, why I think that was exactly the wrong. Right. So putting that in context, I learned to think back on where did mathematics and science has concentrated in mathematics does for simplicity, but doesn’t pick on me and say, what about other areas, but it’s exactly the same things apply.
Uh, mathematics was being born, not as mathematics, but as a mathematical way of thinking about other things, you know, way back they were in Egypt, people building is huge pyramids and worrying about when would the waters of the Nile rise. I know other people worrying about how to navigate across the waters with you.
Couldn’t see the map and the other people worrying about how to predict the future. Doesn’t matter if the fields that we’re predicting was based on principles of strategy that not everybody accepts to that event, they were trying to be. Then these are the kinds of things that we could, and then buy a new way of thinking about those things.
Crept in that you could call mathematical thinking at bit by bit this mathematical thinking, but richer and richer. And then it turned into this wonderful thing called pure mathematics, you know, of the greatest products of the human mind. But remember it was a product of a human mind that it was a product of a law at the root.
And then, so
before I think about computers and learning and spent several years with John penetrate in Geneva and, uh, we thought a lot about what sorts of quit, but I think PJ was wrong about a lot of things. A lot of. But I think he was very right about a lot of fundamentals. And one of the things he was right about is that if you want to understand the evolution of thinking in a, in an individual intelligence, say child, Think about how that evolution and the history of ideas to plants.
And don’t be too literal minded. Don’t look for too detailed parallels, but it’s general shame is a lot to be known by that, from that comparison. And I think one thing to be learned is that at least puts you as the question, wouldn’t it maybe be better if we could have children going through the same sort of evolutionary process, as least as I was describing in the development of that.
Wouldn’t it be better if they started with a mathematical way of thinking in doing other stuff, but what are the staff? We can’t give them permits to go to schools too overcrowded already. We can’t send them navigating across the oceans. It’s bit dangerous, et cetera, et cetera. Some people talking about well, giving the children, uh, learning by doing things that rocks, we make all sorts of ones.
So it also. But using an analogy that I’ve used for a long time. Um, I got to think of it as a bit like Leonardo da Vinci sort of pops up now because of all the festival from, from dad brown and so on. But the analogy I like to make is that the unknown invented a lot of things. It was amazing inventor.
You tried to advance them. APAC had, if you look into his drawings and you’re looking at it in terms of what you know about. You can see, Hey, it wasn’t fly from his drawings B I’m quite sure if he’d been able to make one for the guy’s drawings, the way it, the fly, he would have learned how to make one.
That could be better, but he couldn’t make one. Even from his drawings was he didn’t have the technology, the technological infrastructure that you need in order to do that. By the time of the Wright brothers, the situation’s very different. They had machine tools. I knew about also materials, endurance.
Exactly. All sorts of stuff. That didn’t have much to do their plans as such and was too much for any one person in Vietnam to invent there just wasn’t the technology. And I think this is what is true about people who were exploring ideas of learning in a more active way. It wasn’t the technology that we can enable them to take their ideas, which are basically right, but they couldn’t be bad from that.
Couldn’t really turn them into two Bible form because they didn’t know how to implement them. And it’s through implementing the idea. Then it grows from that little spark to a little flag. So we’ve got that at the time of the, of the new math coming back to, to that, I started this sort of degression about evolution of mathematics that.
In terms of this historical development, I’d say, well, what’s wrong with the way we teach math is that we reversed that historical order that starts from mathematics and in the real world. And the generating develops from that to pure mathematics as a formal system, the new math people just couldn’t do that.
And so, uh, they, they didn’t have that as an alternative combined with various other things. But at the time they went opposite directions, I took this formal thing and I tried to make it even more for them. That’s the problem he sends would say in the wrong direction, mathematics, as we teach it in school is already much to fall off and they made it.
There are other ways in which they went wrong, which it’s worth being aware of now related in relation to the presence of computers and that’s that they completely ignored the sort of central resonance of the idea that most parents face for this new man couldn’t make sense of it. And that had a lot to do with telling him to, uh, to the joke and people not liking it and for it not working in fact, because it’s not likely that if the parents are all suspicious of something and discussed it, that the kids will really be ready to thrive on it.
What’s going to have a very strong hold on the kids before that that happened. Which might be the case with some new things, but with the new things, they do have a strong out of the kids, but also the idea that computation and computers are an important direction or doing stuff. This has become part of the common culture.
And so that is much more acceptable. So in lots of ways in going towards the. Used to using it rather than formalizing it in, going towards connecting with what’s in the culture of today, rather than going against it. And in many other respects, I won’t give too much to do math, but it’s worth thinking about that change didn’t happen was possible, and it could go in an opposite direction going in different directions.
And that’s not just abstract. You look concretely, you can see very precisely. Why is it bad to experiment of the new math just was wrong. So, so what did we do? Attempt mischievous experiment. With the kids. I provoked a few thousand kids to ask the teachers, for example, choose a good moment. When we were doing fractions, why do we need to do that?
Now? What does a mischievous experiment? And I did apologize to the teachers involved, but because I just mischievous because I knew the teachers were about to answer the question then in a good way, who have caught to just did much better than I thought possible. But although I have a huge respect for teachers.
This is 13th anti teacher remark it’s that teachers are trapped in a situation where they have to defend something that’s indefensible. And even to the extent that it could be somewhat defended, they’re not given the ammunition and the background to having to defend it. So the Tomiko answered was reporting back to me.
What about this kids? What do we need math? And cause when you go out into the real world in the supermarket to five things in your mom and et cetera, et cetera.
Well, firstly, that every kid knows it’s not true. And every kid knows in the supermarket, nobody does those things machines, the baby. So the net effect is the kids see this as just being lied to that. This is another piece of teacher double tool, and this is really bad. It was undermining.
it’s lying to kids. Nothing could be worse for learning than lie. And what really is painful is that I know those teachers, some of them and thought they had the last to lie to the kid. They love kids and they want to do, but they’re placed in a situation where they don’t have any choice, the situation forces them to lie about,
well, now why do we lose children? Or if we look through the content of the math curriculum, maybe this applies to other things. I was, I say, I’m concentrating on that sixth street. You look through it and you walked point, is there, why do we teach this? Well, a lot of it is, uh, what I call it. That’s a mask justification.
No, when I was a kid, I still was only not set up to school. Any kid who didn’t study lags and preferably grief was a kid left behind. And, uh, why nobody thought you actually. I think it was maintained for good or bad reasons that learning Latin was good for your development. In other districts, don’t want to go into why I was a little deaf in there, but you know what?
I think the laugh and boots on the other foot really laughing too soon because in fact, most of what we teach kids is just like that justification. It’s not that, but so by Latin caught me in justifying a piece of knowledge, not because you had to be going to use that on me. And I don’t just mean using.
Uh, Presley pragmatic, materialistic way. If you use it for this in a spiritual way to think, right? Thoughts or sling, you make beauty, that’s just as much use, but that wasn’t the justification of the land. I mean, they, the Latin is justification. Is that using it on foot? It’s not for its own sake, but because it serves some other purpose, usually not very well spelled out.
And, and the case of the, the mathematics, it’s almost all like that. And why should you know that multiplying this fraction by dividing this fraction by that fraction, you turn it upside down or we will find common denominators. What we even solved that was all word problems, or what’s the point? Whoever uses a formula for, for quadratic, for, for solving quadratic equation, say nobody ever uses any of these things.
If they have a purpose it’s because in some way they supposed to prepare the way and prepare your mind. Well, now is this, the Trex is the evidence that teaching children, these things at a young age prepares their mind. I don’t know any good study with and how you do it really rigorous study. Then I’ll throw a few example, few, few observations.
I was very close friend. How long, how long was one of the regular was out of our century.
He could do the most mathematical manipulation he’s head on pavement. It’s amazing. Know this is. There are some people whose ability to take out the medical things and they’ll be like them as easily breathless. And he’s one of those he grew up in China and a 70 year old setting where you have the traditional Chinese educated and doing any mathematics before the age of 11, I studied philosophy and I would treat him calligraphy writing and some history, no mathematics.
After 11, they studied mathematics. He’s not the only one I’ve interviewed a few other people from that culture. Same story. Another kind of evidence some years ago in Mexico, a company, the company Telmex that’s the biggest, uh, took that maybe when they privatized the telephone system, Telmex took over the system and it, part of the agreement was they would not fire, you know, the weather, but they didn’t want to transform what was a totally, an old fashioned analog system into a digital system.
The same as problem about those Withers, because what full them and telephone maintenance was. You find these wires, it’s not fruit break. Maybe at most you sold up no, nothing more sophisticated than that. And now they want to be same people to work with the most sophisticated digital. So they sent out a program essentially off of school.
I looked at the. They taught them at the stuff that you normally done in school. And these people, if they’d ever been exposed to it, as they say it didn’t have a good accent in most of them, they didn’t know anything as a rough estimate. They learned school math about somewhere between seven and 10 times as fast as is done in school.
And I would attribute that to a couple of reasons. I think the power of failure principle, that because it was, you know, it was part of working on real life. They could learn a bedroom faster. They were more to mature than you. A lot of other things, all sorts of reasons, but they could learn a 10 times of fast, which raises this question.
Even if we want to give, even if we think kids ought to have all that stuff, we teach. Maybe we’ve just been incredibly inefficient by spending all that time and effort and money and doing the somewhat psychological damage to those kids who, what is going on that don’t quote to do limited and so classified as quote dumb, or I don’t have a head for figures or somehow the self, uh, derogatory kind of judgment maybe into just did this 10 years later, or five years later, you could do it in obviously more efficiently.
These questions are not discussed in the education community, the education research community. At the time of the focused on how the system that is there works or how it doesn’t work or how to fix it, or base level fits. Nobody is really asking the question. What would it be like to have real turning and why not?
And how does this one that we have back job when you couldn’t match it out? Unless you designed the tell you got some, I don’t want to turn into that. You want to put it into. So that’s the real question for us. And the real question I want to sort of say a few more things about and sit down and get collections.
But I think this was really the thing that people asked him is who have to be footing sailors amounts about time to thinking about it’s too easy and now say self-indulgent for us. And we all love to do it. I’m not on the fittest. To receive any blend, any sort of criticism that comes from that. It is self-indulgent to say I can spend three hours with the kid every week and do something wonderful when you can.
But what about the billion other kids? And what about the rest of the time for that? And it is not it’s irresponsible of us because we have that is the people who have felt the power unfortunately, to do when powerful ideas are built into our embodied Gideon, computational tools. We felt that now I have that responsibility to translate that into a form that can be, have a chance to put out the five.
Uh, well, what do we do it? I used to use the slogan for awhile. I didn’t, but I think I’m bringing it back instead of trying to make kids love the mat. They hate it’s make a math. They will not. How do we go about making a math that we’ve done? So I’ve just gone through a few. I think there are a few of the principal.
I mean, I think one is, let’s say my story about the pyramid. We must start see and recognize math as a mathematical way of thinking that happens in the course of doing which you do automatically. And every time you’ll get a kid to write a program, to make it a calm move around, you are doing that. You’re introducing a mathematical way of thinking into road construction or pay day.
Uh, so you were taking the first step, but two more steps. One is to be conscious and for the kid to be conscious central, the people around you, that this is something very different. It’s just a first. And safety to sell them. I don’t think that means including trying to make more explicit. What are those ideas and how do they relate?
So this is be mindful about it, putting it on a, on another level. I’ll give you an example of something that only occurred to me very, very recently in that it’s. Uh
So when we introduced.
Somebody told her a little bit about this total. What is this, what’s this thing about having this, this object? Well, two bags and I think that all of the, I think quite literally tens of thousands of teachers who have given literally tens of millions, maybe hundreds of large numbers of students to their readiness programming for.
Some sort of experience, most of those, think of it as well. This is a nice way to do a little bit of programming. It’s a nice way to maybe do a little corner of mathematics or we can do polygon and a few things like that, that I don’t think many teachers ready understand because they, it’s not their fault.
It’s because their mathematical education doesn’t give them the foundation for understanding. And I think this is something that we, people like me who come from mathematics into this. Do I have that understanding? I have not done as good a job as we might have in putting it out to people. The reason why that turtle is so interesting is because it’s what it really does is to bring it into the.
Come to us of what children can do. One of the half dozen, most important ideas ever in the history of mathematics and that’s Newton’s idea of differential companies. Now subliminally investigation of it, teachers, it’s not, it’s not this isn’t stable teachers type math education teacher. None of the level of teachers I spoke to the meeting made that connection that this had anything to do with calculus, but it has to do with what Cal could this grantee is about, which is not about the one.
It’s about the idea. What a brilliant time do you have you done that? If you want to understand the orbit of the moon around the earth or the earth around the sun, what you really need to know is that from the way in which the gravitation of the sun affects it just right now on it’s mobile, we have your dust dead from that.
You’ve gotta be able to under, can deduce the behavior of the whole, of the whole path. The shape of the path that he lived is that say a global phenomenon understanding of locally. The big stamp that took differential equations. Aren’t about South Africa from the little step to the big, whoever lead to two block.
Now U-turn having done this. It got translated into a lot of algebraic manipulations about how to put this into practice. It’s inaccessible to young children, all of a sudden over the computer, it becomes accessible. And so this idea of the turtle Sobon that different from different from you. Ukraine says circle is point fixed distance from a given.
But if you imagine an ant walking on a circle on a path and trying to decide, is this a set of long and aunt could not decide whether it’s a circle according to Euclid’s definition, because you have to go outside the circle at, at this distant appointment. If you don’t get the little pieces, one at a time, that’s your total field of view.
You can’t know what’s at the Tuttle, who is the turtle nose, as it goes around, that each piece is made with the same amount. Oh, Tobin from the side of the rock and going forward. So there’s a beat big, amazing idea that you can know that you’re on a cell call just bit by bit without having to go out and go at that home.
So how do we convey that idea? This, this half magazine, well festival is going to appreciate it as amazing and to appreciate it as amazing. Maybe it certainly helps to know that it’s historical connection, what it did, the history of science, but once I can put it in that context of a lot of other. One of the things that I find most amazing about that sort of thing is thinking about, about control mechanisms is suppose you had this actual physical turtle walking about the floor and it’s got light sensors and so on, and you wanted to pull out the one that I use most often, actually I haven’t always teases me.
My son jumped on the table at a meeting.
Anyway, if I want to, if I’ve heard this turtle that I want you to walk around the table to program and to do that, there’s a Newtonian way. Globally, our measure the table. This is say a hundred units in that. So it’s a square time. Also I say go forward and a hundred units and then turn right 90 degrees and go forward a hundred units again, walk around the table.
No, that it probably worked probably wonderful. Cause you didn’t measure exact deal. It was a turtle doesn’t behave. Exactly. And besides even demogra around the table, it wouldn’t walk around that table. A much better way is again about the level of product to the table. And you just do this little program that way.
If you touching the table, turn away from it. I bumped into it tangled step forward. And if you’re not touching the table, you might be getting away from it. So turn towards it, take a little step forward. Keep on doing that. I and to go get you around the table when you get to the head and you do this several thing forward, a little ride down the road until you get back into it.
And so it’s amazing that the things in Dell, around the table without knowing anything about the shamans, every web justice on a round table, or like trying to get a table, well suppose when a program and to go over towards the light over there, and it’s got a light sensor, even more amazing in a way that you might think, well, I’m a program.
This is a robot to go to that lot. So what do I do find some way to find out the direction of distance to that light. This is preview. This is. The way he kept her. I had to think Kevin knew this was at
that time. He drove with me. So then if I know it’s I know where it is. I’m direct myself. Seven probably would work out because I’d probably be a little bit out. I was missing my train. If I just have sidelined sentences, I just tell her it’s more to the left or more to the right. And I go down a step forward if it’s more to the, to the, to the right arm tender, right.
So little local step by step to a level. And what’s even more amazing is it brings out the fact that. Through very inaccurate. You didn’t have to turn exactly. Maybe you’re gonna have a crummy mechanism. So when you’re trying to make it in turn, one degree attends three degrees or a quarter of a degree.
Doesn’t matter from crummy, publishable, local knowledge, you’ll get precise global fetch. Get that Edison sat. We would find more ways out. I miss we can see this as amazing we’re missing the whole thing. We’re missing it. Got to see it as amazing to see it as amazing. We have to put it in a bigger context.
I’ve used another, uh, your principle that covers this. Principle of in how the empowerment of say they, the idea of doing this idea was that powerful idea, Chinese sirens, but like many other examples of what happens when it gets into the school curriculum. It’s a disempowered it’s turned into something which kids have to learn to pass the test, or because the teacher told them, well, they didn’t believe what the teacher said anyway, but they didn’t know that as the test they’d be in trouble, they parents would beat on the goal.
They wouldn’t get to come out, but they don’t appreciate this as something powerful in itself. So systematically the most powerful ideas of being disempowered, a good strategy, identify those powerful idea. And then the strategy will reimburse. The idea that disempowered one, I’ve got pointed about these terrible things that then that’s missed.
Then I don’t know this one’s in this, not so much because teachers don’t have the mathematical background, but because they sort of shy, but they’d be less shy. If the reason was more emphasized though, this one I did in mine spoke, I think I did emphasize it. And that is the fact that you can identify with this thing
is just terribly important that the idea that. I am now working with kids. And I wanted to talk about making a circle when the kid wants to do something tangible. How about a hand go to use to do it, walk it down, describe yourself doing it. But I think a lot of especially maths teachers are a bit shy about walking in a circle themself.
Um, seems a bit too touchy feely, but, but it’s important because of two reasons, one it’s putting them inside the mathematics, it’s making it much closer to, it’s not this deep, dispassionate, this disembodied black, this thing it’s new or enact and also new drawing on knowledge that you have.
No, I think this thing about where do you can tell that that’s how 120 degrees, because everybody knows, but nowadays anyway, because of another product you like skateboards, everybody, every kid knows what a 365.
So that that’s all the way around is 360. Well, it’s something that should make a lot of and not just try and slow that it can make a lot of, it’s a big thing. That’s an interim based. And so that you view in the form of, of your antibodies knowledge. And now what we do with this is bringing onto a body of knowledge into a more generalizable.
Uh, usable form. So all of these are our ways of thinking that already made explicit in dealing with the kids in order to be generalized, to using, uh, to, to, to developing a different way of thinking about the mathematics. Other examples, since I mentioned the handle, I got a lot of, a lot of debate discussion about how do we deal with the fact that the logo and grow sweet corn when you’re doing these things, we usually talk about how much you turn.
So if you’re drawing a triangle, you make the thing, go for it so much in terms 120, like in the school of textbooks that I’ve told about that handle, that program. About this,
that had that turn. It was 128 and they told them about the 60. And therefore the theorem is that the, some of the internal angles are 60 degrees. And I’ll follow the therapist. And some of these, they were called Easter or ankles is, is, uh, is a hundred, is 360 degrees. And so he has an example of intellectual cowardice and sort of being subservient to the system that generally speaking of doing this sort of stuff, when they do do a little bit of turtle stuff in that, in, in, in relation to mathematics, they sort of apologize for the fact that if you’re using a different sort of ankle, but really they shouldn’t be apologizing, they shouldn’t be boasting.
If we look and say, what is the difference between these two angles? And the math books is called internal and external, but it’s another way of thinking about it. That if you think of statically of angle, as related to a drawing, this is a natural way to think about it. But if you think of ankle in the real world turning, it’s not the natural way, it’s the terrible ways and natural way.
The air traffic, common implant. Part of the EMP, the traffic controller giving me directions, we’ll say tone. 35 degrees, whatever, to a heading of seven. So the turn is that amount that if you think of what you’re in your skateboard was Scotto a dancer. It’s that one there, this is the S this is the static angle.
And this is the dynamic way of thinking about ankles. And then we don’t. Well, always, always you think about head was not manically, not static. So it’s the brightest of the school textbooks, or would it be apologizing and saying, how come they use that funny way of describing? Well, we know the answer because it’s the influence of dates on the paper.
If you’re doing things static paper, that is the natural way to think about everybody. You’re thinking dynamically computation way. The other way is the dynamic way. So this shoved from this sense of angle to that sense of that. It’s an example of the way in which the computer allows us to bring into FOMO and the valuable where the dynamic and intuitive idea in this case of angle at the same applies, convenient, other, other concepts, the computer, and that was as good.
Bring that dynamic intuitive. Thinking into the mathematical realm. And well, you couldn’t understand that this is another way that some people use it and that the kid should understand that, but that this should be the primary way of doing that point on to make them, I mean, if I put to him how that transformation, it’s not just at the terrible happens to work like that, the terrible website, that for a reason.
And that reason is way bigger than thinking about turtles and squeak or algo. It’s about the wedding with computational thinking. Leads to different and more powerful and more natural ways of dealing with the ideas that is the thought you have to put it outside there. And that kind of example is what can build out into seeing that the point of the computer is not to serve, but to transform not to improve, but to render obsolete the ways of thinking.
So I think maybe that’s enough. That’s good sentiment. Maybe I just tell one more story when my suit story, which I think last time I told him I was Kim, was there two years ago, now that I have, I just invented this story. When I was invited to talk at the eight, which I hardly ever touch the guy that one time I told him to these people, they are, I told him the story.
So these powerful parable is about a country with poor reasons and it being lost at this time. People lived mainly on suit. How so? It is not very nutritive and it gives you calories, but it’s only good food. So the food on the whole, that’s what they must be. Well, it’s not so healthy, but what had happened in this country is that they’d grown up brilliant, really brilliant traditional medical researchers who had found out how to.
Sort of make an additive to the Seward a little bit, this theory on how to cure the diseases that came from eating too much fat. So these suing doctors, it’s not that, that way they really knew about sort of very difficult and hard problems to do this. Now, one day somebody wakes up and says, you know, we’ve got airplanes and all sorts of technologies.
These days, we don’t have to eat the sewage and get every kind of food from all over the world. So they go to the doctors and say design. I said, doctor saying no. And the doctors and posing for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of boundaries, but there’s a good reason why not scientists don’t know anything about any other diets.
They really are very expert about sewage. And if you have Sue adopters to design. Not that diet based on, on green vegetables, all that sort of organic fish. Oh, they don’t know about that.
who was at that, that meeting looked around and he thought everybody in that group was nodding in agreement that we’re all thinking. He said the same thing. All these people here are suing Dr.
education research community center, doc that we establish. Uh, diet intellectual diet prosecuting and its education reaches researchers and psychologists competence. They become a family. Good at understanding how to, what to do with those, how to make the best of it and how to undo and understand when it goes wrong, as far as is possible.
But what they don’t know about none of their business or their traditional background is how to make it out of the,
[01:00:42] Moderator: and another point is there’s a thriving.
[01:00:46] Seymour Papert: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’ve been through all sorts of bad reasons for the opposition, but there’s one sort of sweaty January. try this out. That I’m going to lose all my revenue from my patents and my books.
I really want to do this. They still don’t know how to. And the judge seems to them on the impossible thing. And I think that now education road, a lot of it is like Kim says there’s a big vested interest. But I think beyond that, , they are sincere people who love to see something different than they’ve done in this room.
There are ideas experiences which could help them at least get a toehold on how to think about. What I’m trying to incise is find a ways. I know how find ways to get those ideas made this company and get those ideas into those circles and get these people thinking. Okay.
I think that that is so far behind what we do with justice. The idea that every kid, every, we don’t have any examples. Like I was part of, I live in Maine and I was part of developing the idea in Maine bag, give every kid a computer, but in the end it turned out to give every kid in middle school, a computer.
And that immediately it’s better than nothing. There’s no question that it’s a good thing to do, but it’s different because where they’re really needed is in first grade and they really needed so that they begin to, to develop the different ways of thinking from, from the beginning at the size of the system needs to change.
And what I really believe in home is that they all countries who pacify themselves on the bell countries, things they want to check. And that’s something like this country, which classifies itself was developed on playing a lot of schools and said we’ve got problems and basically Americans themselves satisfied place.
I think the coming to your show. And I think we are going to exploit that shock. I think we’re going to get a better result. And I think you might,
[01:03:28] Audience member: I’ve been studying is the building’s foundation. And, um, how the statistics coming out of their studies has showed the drop out rate in high schools and the statistics that are coming out of the schools as performance space, um, are tragic and you’re eliminating the arts.
And so I think there’s a pattern just that people aren’t feeling that their children.
[01:03:54] Seymour Papert: Yes. I agree with it. It’s already, there’s already growing a growing sense of disquiet, but I think that people seeing statistics, I mean, education kind of statistics, that it doesn’t track the internet. Got it all to how it makes them uncomfortable and squirm, but it’s not strong enough to make, to just make the.
[01:04:19] Audience member: So you’re going to have this massive, massive infusion of technology into Brazil, these countries, what are you doing? What are you doing to the system? What will you do to the educational system?
[01:04:34] Seymour Papert: Well, of course there’s lots of answers to lots of things. Um, uh, what I really believed in, I believe anything that we try to do is going to not going to be what’s important, except if it’s planting seeds of something, rather than not think that, uh, having the context of having everybody, if it can have a lot of time to computers does not automatically produce deep
Kids will be more excited about school. They will learn whatever they learning better, but that’s not going to be transformative. What’s going to be transformative is when they start doing different things. And, uh, when they start how they just started doing different things. Well, I believe it’s going to be like every, every big technology or innovation, always compensating to use through a small number of early adopters who will stick their necks out and try.
Trying to do something different and these will train the others. I think what’s going to be important in whatever country is. Adopters is not what happens across the board in the first year is whether one or two or 5% of the, of schools and teachers really try to do something different. And what exactly what you guys are doing.
I think we’ll get some programming. Some computational ideas slept get the of, in that, in a context, in a way it can grow much more readily because all these computers are available and where there’s a spirit of looking for, for. Uh, about something that’s the way I think about it. And we’d welcome any ideas about how to do that.
I imagine that when these computers go out, that the first thing that will happen, which has happened everywhere, where you get one-to-one laptops coming in for the field. Three months, or maybe a year, most teachers are going to be, it’s going to be just so wonderful having these things. And mostly you’re just going to do the same, the same things, but using them in the easy way, like for reading and these have a quality has been given.
It’s been very energetically built into the design system that it’s better than these laptops. In many ways. One being that it’s designed to be a comfortable reading device and laptops really are not comfortable. You can’t lie down, scan, comfortable, lying down. Whereas this one, I suppose you’ve seen pictures.
You can see them on the way because I’ve never talked about, or, but the thing Sean’s around and it’s got a handle and you can, it turns into it’s a bit heavy for an e-book, but it’s much better than this. So there’s no for reading and writing. Sending messages basically. But what we’d like to have honored is a few samples, but some mathematics on some of this stuff I’m dealing with with the angles and dynamics have a little bit of how to introduce program, and these would be seeds planted there.
And I think most teachers would pick them up very quickly, some will. And then I think the big effort, and I granted this is a regular pro bono. You becoming part of that effort. It’s got to be a grassroots effort of producing ideas and things that can contribute to the teachers, reaching out for more interesting things to do with it, to do that.
[01:08:42] Audience member: um, you started to speak about it.
Part of the a hundred dollars. It’s interesting. It’s less attention to the hardware and the brilliance time more, what he meant native distribution of software that goes out, whatever goes out. That would be what reveals the agenda, uh, the partners in practice. So when you say it a little bit of specifically about squeak or some global, what what’s going to be on those machines,
or is that specific for the national partners?
[01:09:29] Seymour Papert: Well, hopefully it’s specifically partly the national. They haven’t been very energetic, the Brazilians a little bit more than the others. That haven’t been more than very energetic about thinking about. Um, but I think I’m just saying the same thing again.
What will go out. On the machine sound form of programming language in the family, that screen can go and exactly what Ford is great, but there’ll be definitely some form of programmability open, designed to be good for kids. There will be some samples and the pieces of mathematics that enable a few topics in mathematics, like doing turtle, Therese, geography, doing simulations of population dynamics and ecological things.
The things that we know, there are a few things that we’ve had a lot of experience in how to bring these. Two kids doing know, doing physics to thinking of the particle. Instead of as static evidence, I have a demonstration about, I think, 40 undergrads going to have a few samples of the soil of things you can do in math and science.
They will be some examples of some obvious things like you can use, use the computer to make, uh, you know, do a history, a history research. There’s no deep ideas. In essence, deep ideas took you don’t need deep ideas to get going. So that’s what a bit, but there will be more samples and then a final thing because we can make it.
I can make a hold of you, but the idea is to put out pieces that would incite people. And I think that the whole idea is sufficiently dramatic. I think it’s fairly scaring in the developing countries and sufficiently inspiration. So it’s scary. And the developed countries sufficient the inspiration in the developing countries that a lot more people will be drawn into wanting to do good things.
That’s going to be an evolutionary process, I believe deeply
[01:11:59] Audience member: and grassroots effort. I’ve got an opportunity where I have the ability to be an agent of change in a single school. And then I’ll just describe that a little bit. My wife principal, the school’s Catholic school. Uh, I’ve joined the technology committee, uh, not wanting to buy into, uh, the sewer doctors, uh, specifically wanting to be an agent of change.
And I guess my question for you is since you’ve had a lifelong struggle with this, when I run into the inevitable barriers that I’m sure I will. What sort of advice would you give me for handling
[01:12:40] Seymour Papert: Well, I think
grassroots and seed. Think about what can you do that will. Uh, EFC for development of the system. Um, it doesn’t answer me. What’s good for the kids. So I would
I would test line, look at that. That says way is the entry pass. You know, maybe it’s a biology teacher who might resonate to the idea of using making program models to represent ecologically director,
get out of that. Rude, for example, um, And I think to avoid the obvious approach. I think probably the way to change mathematics teaching is not by changing the mathematics teacher because they’ve got too much vested interest in doing it. And it’s not only their best interest. So the mathematics teacher, a mathematics teacher, my job, as far as the bureaucratic system, That would be judged on is how well kids do mathematics, which is defined as certain very specific kind of knowledge.
And although a different approach might need me to do that, get help kids do that on the age and that noise more easily, basically, as long as I’m confined to that, being the knowledge that go to none, I’m very limited on every teacher has a different set of goals. So understanding that you call it, you understand genetics.
Now, if mathematics can help understand genetics, that biology teacher might be more open to taking in mathematics and the mathematics because mathematics can actually help. The goals that are the official goals for the biology teacher, but new kinds of mathematics are contrary to the official. I really mean that as a example, to think with that, to say, when don’t look for the direct route, but look at this as a system problem and
[01:15:16] Audience member: on the places.
Yeah. I’ve been working on, uh, I started the first Lego league this year in Rhode Island. I’ve got the children of the school board. Uh, they’re going to be part of my team on this. Yeah. Yeah. If I’m working on her, on your business for principle thinking legal
Because the steel steel is steel. Use it as, uh, as a stopping point on many as. If you can, if you can stay to them, one of his biggest mistakes or whatever, because many of these things saying steal usable, meaning that they’re not Cortez was to say where the drunk or what can be made from where we must stop to get.
[01:16:35] Seymour Papert: Yeah, well, well, first of all, let’s put aside what has been most things really in trouble and meeting people to say double PJ, because research has showed that in this role, most of what has influence people that way is totally irrelevant. And the fact that you can show the babies no more than he thought that that it’s got nothing to do with how development happens, happens later.
But this has been used very loudly as, as a way of sort of sweeping Pinochet out and quotes. He made rash statements about how little babies you really didn’t know very much about. And he in a sense is quite transparent. These writings, what he knew about very small babies was based on preserving his own, but as with the older children, because based on looking at thousands of children, And have you a lot of discussion with the law.
So there’s all that, that he’s makes them on Brahm state. Some sometimes nevertheless, some interesting. Right. But let’s put that aside. And now on the development later on, the other thing that I think the big thing that he did wrong was, I mean, to recognize that there could be a big change in the day-to-day practice of life, not to say that for Phi, it’s very important that, uh, The turtle at the roots of intellectual development in, in what the children do.
So for example, they, one, one correspondence to conservation of number, and this is everywhere in the life of the child and know one shoe at one sock and went, full-time setting the table, placing knives and forks, it’s all over the place. And so there’s a route for nucleus for certain kinds of thinking to develop these kinds of thinking, show themselves, and that part of intellectual development that comes about a fairly spontaneous.
Well, the social that would mean in the society. It’s the practices of the society. And that’s about that happened to me to easily. Let’s say you see it at the natural log of the town. No, wait, I think God different, most truncated character. And in fact, didn’t try to discuss this with him, but it was out of here at the end of his life.
He was, he was very interested. He was too light for me. I think it was too late in his life for him to really think through how to rethink so many things. But I think that the computer means that there are new kinds of concrete activities, like setting the table, putting shoes and socks on. So there are things that the concrete that were very far one and a half strikes.
Before. So what’s happened is a change in this concrete basis from which the, the formal systems grow. So I think this doesn’t mean that he’s distinction between concrete and formal is, has to be thrown away. It’s just conceptually, it’s still the same as it’s called there, but it’s content is different because what is concrete is what’s concrete in terms of the, of the life of the, of the kids.
And now there are different things that are concrete terms. And I think that that’s also something like shifting the sense of ankle there. Thank you for that. I may not think this time when I get a chance to talk about this or in writing and I’m doing on this, I don’t know. Every month, that question that use this other other example, because you know, I think that
if you look back at the history of discussion of here is all, they really depend on all that. Is this something in night, four, essentially some basic law of development, or does it depend on the culture and the life of people around her kind of experiments that were done, where you go into an African village and you see whether they develop in conservation, like the kids, Geneva or New York, and yes they do.
And you connect all together inside that you start to say, well, it’s not dependent on the particular society or culture. It’s something is central or. In a biological or theoretical rows of data, maybe more than yours, all of a sudden they’re thrown to the science of development. But as I see it now, looking back, I think in some important ways, The African village.
This is before hundred dollar laptop scattered or African village is more like New York as it was before the computers came. And I loved them as long as the computer. Hey. Now that we see this commonalities that we see on all the product and the fact that we lived in an age with objects, with static.
And when objects come down that make this is different and that’s the difference that makes the difference. So it makes a difference of what things are about to become as this thing is a formal or things, according to what are the forms of the concrete about this? I wrote every paper. I mean, to take the
it’s called at this time, the logical pluralism, uh, re was agree, evaluating the country,
but the point was to rethink what we mean by concrete. Um, cause I think that was an extremely valuable notion, uh, with the Richard experience, we have it split in a specific forms. It’s not the same as of course so are met. So that’s the way I think of that basic peer journey and ideas are really important, but you can take them literally transposed from, from the 1920s and thirties, which is when he really developed these ideas to the 21st century, then the idea of Southern sublimation and accommodation and looking at these two, it’s just fundamental Phi really was the first time.
Sometimes I find it runs through his who’s worth telling how this. What’s happening with peer to peer J is throwing a baby with the bath tub under the most sad ways, self destructive lives. And I see it’s not just mean you don’t want to consider it long. Is it. Um, we’re putting in a different context.
Why all of these things I’m saying not being just obvious to, to all the people in education theory and cognitive science. I think the cover of reasons one is that PNG has a radical and most of these people are conservatives in relation to education. As insofar as they come into education, they want to improve it.
They don’t want to change it. They don’t want to think about the company had just, just to take a little personal thing. How I became involved with Peter maybe speaks, tells our story PM. Jack wrote money from American foundations to revisit his studies of different aspects of the development. First one, he was about to read all the briefs, spent a year of reexamining.
His ideas about the development of novel is doing at all. So he wanted his files to home, assist somebody to work with him. I really think that almost any buddy in the standard psychological educational world would have said it’s fun to psychologist. Who’s interested in that. PLJ doesn’t want him to find a psychologist.
You want to find a mathematician who was willing to spend a year in, in thinking about children, because he thought, if you want to think about number, you need a mathematician being a psychologist.
I think that’s just a principle. That’s so neat. I runs right through the difference between and his and his critics. So by accident, his scout count, what are these counts filming me? I went there and in fact, we hit it off and they get up to four years in the app. And that’s why I’m here talking to you about these things.
But so I can say anything. I will be totally grateful. I think I said he got paid or whatever, but, uh, I think that kind of
I have to go in that Stanford development because it’s understand the concept number. It’s an monograph making cognitive models of the brain.
[01:26:58] Audience member: Yeah, this might come from totally left field, but one of your, one of the. Stickers. I’ve actually been thinking that come up in a bit, paying attention to the last couple of years. And another one is, uh, people like James Howard Kinsler and I’m starting to see kind of, uh, which, you know, familiar with this a lot.
Some people’s more or less alarmist theory. And some people are very far along they’re paranoid fringe, and some people are a little bit more basic about like, what do we do when our resources do run out or become unusable? Just because they’re hard to get, um, the long emergency theory that oil is going to run out and we’re going, regardless of what we have to change or where you’re coming from or what we’d like to change, what we have to change.
I see something in the laptop project as being some way to switch over to. Kind of a less destructive global mentality, but maybe,
[01:28:00] Seymour Papert: I mean, that’s offensive on your big other channel, but I really think that you were upset, but she just seems absolutely right. I think that that’s, it’s another angle on the sense of urgency and panic and opportunity with that, that the whole global Sega, I emphasize the global economy, but the global environment or the idea of sustainability and the idea that we tend to take for granted sort of the structure of the world.
Globalization means. Really things are, if we could restore the road or the bank, you over 200 days. Well, all these, I think contributed to creating a situation where it’s at least possible that the idea of change in education could acquire enough urgency to be prepared, to make that big jump was. I think that’s got to that’s how the school.
Exactly. It’s not a huge physically. It’s good. You know, I wasn’t at this calculation, I forgot. And they have some, but it’s surprising to do the calculation at what age of your life. Could you say that you spent more years? Out of school, that in school, you’re basically for a long before it, by the time you’ve been through K through 12 and college credit in that you’re talking 20 years, 20 years, 20 something up there in the forties to 50.
Before you can say, I spend more time out of school. That means it’s hell, it’s not a big stamp on now. So it’s a big thing to overthrow. That’s going to need a big force. I think that that sort of consideration adds to it as to the not certainty, but at least I just want to feel that we’re moving into a period with is that would get more leverage to bring it up as big check seven is trapped because if you don’t try and have .