“Seymour Papert: I’m introducing a word for that, when I was at school they made us learn Latin, why? Not because we were going to speak Latin but because by learning Latin you would learn to think in a rigorous way. We’d laugh at that. I’d think we’d laugh much too soon. Because the justification for most of what we’ve put into the curriculum is exactly the same. Not that it’s useful but that it causes something else to happen. But there is still the question, couldn’t you get that same effect on [sic: by] some other means…?
Geraldine Doogue: That’s more relevant?
Seymour Papert: That’s more relevant, that’s more powerful, and this is my critique of the education establishment that they give zero time to considering whether there’s another way of getting that same goal. Have you really considered what alternatives there are? This huge new range of activities and ways of thinking that have opened to us through the digital world. Have you given serious consideration to whether some of those other things might not serve that purpose better?”
Papert, S. (2004) Interview with Geraldine Doogue for the Australian Broadcasting Coporation’s Program, Sunday Profile. Transcript on the Web here.