“To skeptics who might ridicule seeing learning as the most important issue in a deeply troubled world, I will only say that none of the world’s troubles will be resolved unless people, especially those of the next generation, learn to think in better ways than those who brought the troubles about. Having said this I […]
“I have described myself as an educational utopian — not because I have projected a future of education in which children are surrounded by high technology, but because I believe that certain uses of very powerful computational technology and computational ideas can provide children with new possibilities for learning, thinking, and growing emotionally as well
“I am no Pollyanna about technology. The record of how society took up earlier technologies is frighteningly bad. We first made automobiles in the hundreds of millions and then worried about how to mend the damage done by deforming our cities, polluting our atmosphere and changing the lives of our teenage children. Why should we
“The failure of past reformers to bring about dramatically better learning has armed those within the educational establishment with the argument that future proposals will prove no more capable of bringing about radically improved learning. Some may well believe that the best argument against megachange is this: If it has so long been so desperately
“I’m going to pick on one little corner of school, namely mathematics. I am a mathematician, so it is easy for me to talk about math, but what I have said applies to everything. Now in mathematics the dominating feature is the content. I recently did a little research on what discussion there is in
“The ridiculous situation where supply and demand exist but cannot meet comes from the commitment to uniformity in schools. In most countries the uniformity works at a national level: A ministry of education would have to decide to adopt the new idea. In the United States there is a decentralized system that allows each town
September 26, 2011 Read More »
Video of Seymour Papert on “Idea Aversion” from 2009 interview One of theses clips should play on your device!
September 20, 2011 Read More »
“The scandal of education is that every time you teach something you deprive a child of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.” Papert, S. (1996) The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. Atlanta: Longstreet Press. page 68.
September 15, 2011 Read More »
There won’t be schools in the future…. I think the computer will blow up the school. That is, the school defined as something where there are classes, teachers running exams, people structured in groups by age, following a curriculum-all of that. The whole system is based on a set of structural concepts that are incompatible
September 13, 2011 Read More »
“Those other people, they don’t have conferences about “paper in education.” They have conferences on education, because they think they’re talking about the real thing. By having a conference on computers in education, we are defining ourselves in a subordinate position.” Papert, S. (2004) Keynote address at the i3 1 to 1 Notebook Conference. Sydney,