March 26, 2012
“Many aspects of School block teachers from the fulfillment of functioning in a class as co-learners.” Papert, S. (1993) The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. NY: Basic Books. Page 67.
teaching
March 22, 2012
“In Mindstorms (Papert, 1980), I asked (choosing one out of a vast number of possible examples) why the quadratic equation of the parabola is included in the mathematical knowledge every educated citizen is expected to know. Saying that it is “good math” is not enough reason: The curriculum includes only a minute sliver of the
February 14, 2012
“The best learning is learning that is embraced and enjoyed. Children love to learn until they are taught otherwise. Indeed even then, while most people may hate being taught, I believe that everyone, especially every child, always likes learning.” Papert, S. (1996) The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. Atlanta: Longstreet Press. page 51.
January 26, 2012
“Imagine a party of time travelers, among them a group of surgeons and a group of school teachers, who came from the last century to see how things are done in our days. Think of the bewilderment of the surgeons when they find themselves in the operating room of a modem hospital! The nineteenth-century surgeons
October 25, 2011
“Let’s go back to Dewey for a moment. Intellectual growth, he often told us, must be rooted in the child’s experience. But surely one of the fundamental problems of the school is how to extend or use the child’s experience. It must be understood that “experience” does not mean mere busy work: two children who
October 20, 2011
Teachers were once among the most respected members of their communities — often the most respected. This position is slipping as schools deteriorate and lose their social function. Some visions of the role of technology in education, for example, the image of the best teacher as a distant teacher, further undermine respect for teachers and
September 27, 2011
“An answer to the dilemma is suggested by looking back at the first years of a child’s life, when a volcano of learning takes place with nobody “putting the kid right” or “telling the real explanation.” Why doesn’t the learning of these toddlers run wild? Although they do come to hold beliefs in words or
September 27, 2011 Read More »
September 15, 2011
“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 »
September 13, 2011
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 »
May 4, 2011
Papert wrote the following in the second issue of Wired Magazine back in 1993! “I see then a pattern of intellectual development that I shall oversimplify by casting it in three distinct phases. The first phase is one of universally successful learning. All children show a passion for interactive exploration of their immediate world. The