“Incremental change can be self-defeating; it’s not a step on the way to the big change. A silly example: suppose that the inventor of the refrigerator found that the only way to persuade people to buy them would be to make a refrigerator that could drop the temperature by just one degree. Now that thing […]
“I think it’s an exaggeration, but that there’s a lot of truth in saying that when you go to school, the trauma is that you must stop learning and you must now accept being taught.” Seymour Papert in conversation with Paolo Friere in Brazil during the late 1980s. It was sponsored by Pontifícia Universidade Católica,
Papert’s Principle: “Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.” Minsky, M. (1988) The Society of Mind. NY: Touchstone. p.102. Read the original source of this quote online, here.
“Unless I am missing Tyack and Cuban’s point, this account is in the spirit of Tinkering Towards Utopia and in fact, exemplifies one of the major principles in its presentation of the generic life-cycle of reforms: The reform sets out to change School but in the end School changes the reform. One may at first
“I think that Al Gore and Bill Clinton are doing an incredibly mischievous thing, as is everybody who is propagating the idea that these NetDays, in putting one computer in every classroom connected to the Internet, is a good thing. Now of course it’s a good thing… there’s no question that it is a good
It takes intellectual chutzpah to be serious about replacing “using technology to improve education” by a similar sounding statement with a very different meaning: “inventing new visions of education in the context of a digital world.” And it takes personal chutzpah to face down members of the Education Establishment when they sneer (or worse, smile)
“Some sectors of human activity such as medicine, transportation and communications were transformed beyond recognition during the twentieth century. Compared with such megachange the practices of school have been virtually static. There are in principle two diametrically opposed visions of the role of new technologies in education. In one vision the technology is a means
“Part of learning is getting information. Somebody stands in front of the classroom and preaches, and information is somehow flowing into people’s heads, or so it is said. But that’s only one part of education. The other part, which Dewey would have emphasized, is about doing things, making things, constructing things. However, in our school
“I think if your concept of school is what school is as you’ve seen it in the past, well what else would you do with the computer except put it in there? But why is there no discussion about whether school could be very different, and how different it could be? Now, very different can
In honor of Valentine’s Day… “Closely related to appropriation is another word, love. Einstein said, “Love is a better master than duty.” This is often forgotten in many of the modern theories of education. Take cognitive science, for example. I don’t think the people who gave it that name meant any harm, but in psychology,