“I left Geneva enormously inspired by Piaget’s image of the child, particularly by his idea that children learn so much without being taught. But I was also enormously frustrated by how little he could tell us about how to create conditions for more knowledge to be acquired by children through this marvelous process of “Piagetian learning.” I saw the popular idea of designing a “Piagetian Curriculum” as standing Piaget on his head: Piaget is par excellence the theorist of learning without curriculum. As a consequence, I began to formulate two ideas that run through this book: (1) significant change in patterns of intellectual development will come about through cultural change, and (2) the most likely bearer of potentially relevant cultural change in the near future is the increasingly pervasive computer presence.”
Papert, Seymour A. (1980-81). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas (Kindle Locations 3252-3257). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
In July 2006 I was lucky enough to be able to personally ask a couple of questions to Prof. Papert during a Squeak meeting in Chicago, c/o Columbia University. My central point was related to Piaget “errors” or “biases” and from “exactly” where we should start to renew education now, in the digital age, and after almost 40 years from Logo invention. The answer was too long and articulated to be reported here, and my terrible English would do the rest, but I remember Papert saying a sound “Thank you for the important question!” that still resonate in my ears. So, beside my participation that was anything but important, apart for me and my maturation as pedagogist and educational technologies enthusiast, I think the keynote is still very relevant and give a very good sinthesys of Papert ideas and also some detail about his work in Geneva and the relationship with Piaget and his work. Personally I believe nothing really relevant has happened after Papert and we still have to finish exploring his (powerful) ideas and r-evolutionay work with kids. So, many thanks for keeping us aware of this, greetings from an italian educator that felt in love with Papert ideas more than 20 years ago and that’s still dreaming of being able, sooner or later, to ask him at least another couple of questions!
the speech @ Squeakfest 2006:
http://squeakland.org/content/movies/2006KeyNote.mp3