Seymour Papert on Thinking vs. Learning

 Is learning and thinking the same, who are different? Well, they just, they’re different aspects of the same process. I would say that you can’t really think without learning. ’cause you, if you’re thinking, you’re trying to find out something, you’re learning how to do that. On the other hand, I do think that, when you do something, your emphasis, you could be more focused on wanting to change the way you think. And I’ve called that learning, but that is the, there’s still thinking. You can’t learn without thinking. We can’t learn well without thinking. But while I’m thinking about a problem, I could be really just focused entirely on that problem to solve this problem.

Or I could put a little bit more focus on, well, I do want to solve this problem but I’m really trying to improve my method of solving that kind of problem and it’s more of a learning emphasis. Or you could be in a situation where I don’t care about solving this problem for itself. It’s not an important problem.

It’s only important because I can use it to, it sharpened my way of thinking and learn new ways of solving other problems. Yeah. So I think that the difference is one of attitude between learning and thinking. I think in both cases what I’m trying to do in my, all my thinking about children’s development is to make the.

Thinker, more conscious about thinking. Don’t just think, but also think about thinking. Or more conscious about learning. Don’t just learn, but try to think about learning. Try to learn learning. And so, in both cases, the, I think the struggle is against a traditional system where the teacher decides.

What to think and what to learn, and that pupil carries out instruction and the shift from that to a different sort of learning environment where whoever is learning is also thinking about learning as some very, as a subject That’s interesting to know about.

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