From an interview with Seymour Papert by David Bennahum

From the MEME newsletter (see end)

Seymour Papert was educated at Cambridge University, studied mathematics, and later went to the University of Geneva where he studied with Jean Piaget, whose theories of education deeply influenced Papert. Since the early 1960s, Papert has taught at MIT where he fused his interests in mathematics, learning, and artificial intelligence. In the 1980s thousands of children encountered Papert's programming language, LOGO.

Papert has published a new book, DB: The hope is that children who learn with an appropriate use of computers become adults with a greater capacity to do what? What's the benefit?

SP: We have to look at different kids differently. The most common element with all kids is that they start off as enthusiastic learners, but by the time they have been in school for a few years they have stopped being enthusiastic about learning. The learning instinct is strangled. That makes their lives poorer. It makes society poorer. It makes the economy rigid and inflexible. It makes for a more rigid society all around. For those kids computers could make a very big difference by shaping education to fit their approach to learning. The kids who are already doing very well, who are already going to turn out being successful, I do not know if computers are going to make a deeper change in their overall quality of life. It is hard to say what level they will go to.

The performance of kids in school is determined by intrinsic limitations. "This kid is not mathematically minded. He does not have that kind of intelligence. There is something about that kid that is responsible for bad performance in mathematics." I think that is absurd. If you look at kids in French classes in American schools few of them learn French. But the kids in France have no trouble learning French. Normal human beings can learn mathematics to a much higher level than we do in schools. Now whether beyond that they might all be Einsteins? Presumably not.

DB: In your book you talk about personalization as key to the way of learning you propose. Is this a reflection of the ability of computers to personalize learning, so that a student you thought was a bad math student was really someone who just needed to learn math in a different context than school was prepared to deliver, and that computers can be flexible enough to give that context. Is that a fair interpretation?

SP: Yes.

DB: I have to confess that when I was 13 we got LOGO in our school. I learned to program in LOGO in 1981, and we had one of these visionary teachers where we learned about programming and computers, and how to model things. I came back to my high-school six months ago, and the computer room was completely different. The students were all using Apple Macintoshes, and learning how to use computers the way a consumer learns to use a product.

SP: That is a profound shift. There is no doubt that if you look at the predominant uses of computers, that is what schools are doing. There are still a lot of visionary teachers that have stuck to their way of doing things, but they are a minority. Conditions are ripe for things to become personalized again. One reason why schools could get away with this trivialized stuff is that there weren't enough teachers who understood computers. [snip]

DB: A huge difference in terms of schools accepting computers. There is this internal dilemma, which is why, if schools are headed for bsolescence, would they want to accelerate it? Any system is going to want to protect itself. [snip]

DB: So these people are still with us. We might call them advisors or coaches, but not teachers.

SP: Teacher has this other function. When you think of a religious teacher -- Buddha was a teacher. He was not a teacher in terms of giving assignments or grading papers. He was a teacher in the sense that defended ideas and cultivated them, and set an example for people. That is more like the role model of teacher I am thinking of for kids today.

DB: Is it fair to say that computers are better suited in certain disciplines, like math and science, than others, such as history or literature? If you studied Chaucer, what value would the computer bring? It would bring some, but it would be severely less than in math or science, where those are about modeling, building environments and testing hypotheses.

SP: If we look at what blocks the development of kids today that is true. The computer is a more potent de-blocking agent in relation to road-blocks we see in mathematics rather than literature. If fact, our world does provide multiple perspectives into literature, much more so than in math. That is a matter of how mathematics, versus say poetry, is reflected in our culture.

Mathematics is presented as a narrow thing that if you fall of the track it is very difficult to get back on and continue. Reading poetry there are so many different ways to do so. I think that explains the big difference between the learning and teaching of mathematics versus literature in schools. So, yes, I think computers now have a more dramatic effect in math and science. But ultimately it opens up huge new ideas and possibilities.

For example, being able to publish changes your relationship to writing. Desktop publishing, Web publishing, gives you openings into how kids might see literature in the future. Greater use by kids of literature as a model of how they themselves might create, write and express themselves -- it helps them formulate their ideas and sensitivities. All that is further away from the immediate roadblock now, but it is just as important. [snip]

DB: With computers you really get a feel for it. Is that one of the bigintellectual shifts of this generation, a tendency to see things as systems, interconnected. People in the past used to see history and the world differently.

SP: Many people did get there in the past, and understand systems theory. But many more had a lot of trouble getting there because it was hard to visualize. In the context of computers it is possible for ideas to be empowered, to be concretized, so ideas like systems can be made accessible to many more people. Whether the peaks go much higher or not, I am not sure. I think so, but from the point of view of mass education we do not have to worry about that. If we could get a much larger number of people to get to the level where the best people currently perform, we'd be doing very well.

I think most of the concepts that really make a difference in our lives were there before computers. That does not mean that new ideas will not come from computers. It takes a certain amount of time before aculture can absorb new ideas. I think the idea of computation is one of those. And as an idea in our culture it is extremely young. [snip]

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