Seymour Papert

Papert - school criticism effective

"Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn math and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

Papert - thinking

"You can't think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something".

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

Papert - teacher condition invention provide knowledge

"The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

Papert - school computer child program model

"In many schools today, the phrase "computer-aided instruction" means making the computer teach the child. One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of master over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

Papert - incompetence mathematics balkanized

"It is not uncommon for intelligent adults to turn into passive observers of their own incompetence in anything but the most elementary mathematics. Individuals may see the direct consequences of this intellectual paralysis in terms of limiting job possibilities. But the indirect, secondary consequences are even more serious. One of the main lessons learned by most people in math class is a sense of having rigid limitations. They learn a balkanized image of human knowledge which they come to see as a patchwork of territories separated by impassable iron curtains."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

knowledge use money future

“Generally in life, knowledge is acquired to be used. But school learning more often fits Freire's apt metaphor: knowledge is treated like money, to be put away in a bank for the future.”

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

joke learn in school today

“In a classical joke a child stays behind after school to ask a personal question. "Teacher, what did I learn today? " The surprised teacher asks, "Why do you ask that?" and the child replies, "Daddy always asks me and I never know what to say".”

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

open bad things tool observe communicate

"I think there is good reason to believe that if everything were open, fewer bad things could happen. So give everyone the tools to observe and communicate what is happening".

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

scandal education deprieve benefit discovery

"The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a student of the pleasure and benefit of discovery."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

teach everything find need

"You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

classroom future learning children

"I doubt if there'll be classrooms in the real future. There'll be something else. Obviously, there'll be places where children learn, but they won't resemble what we see today."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

learning doing instructionist constructionist

"The important part of learning is doing. I think the big change is that we will move from an emphasis in instructionist thinking to constructionist thinking."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

administration school education outmoded system

"the administrations of the schools and the professors in the schools of education and the government agencies, this whole structure which has been built around supporting and understanding an outmoded system."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

learner word pedagogy teacher good

"We don't even have a word in English for the art of being a good learner, as we have what is to learning as pedagogy or instructional sciences to teachers, to teaching. I think teachers, if they got to be credited for anything, it's for being good learners so that they can participate in the learning process, model the learning process, set the example. I don't think they need to know about learning. They need to be good at it."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

school trouble education interest

"The trouble with school is that it calls itself education. It pretends that anybody can be "motivated" by what's going to happen in 12 years time. They're not. We can restructure the learning environment so that people can learn from what they're interested in."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

linear curriculumschool learning

"I think the idea of the linear curriculum is itself another manifestation of a production-line mode of organization. As the child moves through on the seventh of May in his third year he will learn this; and on the ninth of April in his fifth year he will learn that. In the extreme, it is all spelled out."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

advantage learing digital technology curriculum

"in order to take advantage of the new avenues of learning opened by digital technology, we are going to be obliged to give up this linear curriculum mode of dissemination of knowledge."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

megachange children learning policy prevent

"I anticipate megachange in the way children learn. When we look around us we see not only an absence of megachange, we see a number of ways in which policy seems to be designed to prevent the megachange."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

change school evolution deterioration irrelevant children sync

"Now, given that picture of a rapid change of society, one would expect to see a rapid evolution of the institutions charged with preparing the young for it. We do not see this. We see a much slower rate of evolution of the school and that means we’re seeing a bigger and bigger gap between school and society. This gap is what I believe is responsible for the deterioration of performance in our schools and our educational systems. Because the children can see this; they can see that school is irrelevant. They feel that the pace of school and the mood of the school culture is out of sync with the society in which they live."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

bureaucracy administratiion status quo computer

"the bureaucratic administration has a deep, vested interest in maintaining the status quo. So very quickly we saw the computer converted from being the revolutionary instrument that the visionary teachers hoped to find in it and to become, instead, an instrument of reaction, a bulwark of conservatism."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

learn taught school technology kids better lifelong

”We’re moving into a time when people need to know how to learn things they weren’t taught in school. Second, we now have the technology to let kids learn better. This will not just allow them to learn the same things better; it will teach kids to learn radical new things at all ages.”

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

school change world collapse diversity

"The decision to make is not whether we will continue with school or change it. It will collapse. Our question is whether we’ll wait until we’re driven to the wall and the system is collapsed from within from its own internal contradictions before we decide that we’re going to create conditions that will allow a new system where there’ll be diversity of learning paths, diversity of teaching methods, diversity of subjects to be learned."

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

School strangled cost epidemic learning disability

“Our school systems are being strangled by the cost of this curious epidemic of learning disability.”

— Seymour Papert (1928-2016)