technically
learning
The Forgotten Black Innovators of Ed Tech
Part III
Part III
In honor of Black History Month, this post is part of a series on the Black educational technology innovators who are likely all but forgotten by educational technology researchers and practitioners today. These individuals did cutting-edge work and worked with well-known researchers, but for various reasons (including, at least in some cases, the discrimination and challenges that Black researchers have faced in academia), their stories are rarely told. My inspiration for looking into these stories was a realization that my class on educational technology almost exclusively focuses on White men who played a pivotal role in the history of educational technology, but as the stories in this series make clear, even when academia was dominated by White men, other voices were still present. These stories are not just about technology innovations, but also about civil rights and the desire to advance the opportunities of others.
Part I - Dr. Weusi-Puryear and Dr. Weusijana
Part II - Dr. Roulette William Smith
Part III - Dr. Shaw and His Mentors
Part III - Dr. Shaw and His Mentors
I thank Dr. Shaw for his help in constructing some of this narrative.
—
In memory of Bob Moses, who passed away on July 25, 2021.
—
A young South African Jewish high school student could not understand why Black people were treated differently from White people. He started hosting evening classes in his home for Black servants (Ivry, 2016). And while he would often be aloof even into adulthood, he never abandoned his concern for other people. In fact he would spend much of his career trying to enhance educational opportunities for children worldwide. The apartheid formally commenced in 1948, while he was finishing his undergraduate degree in philosophy. His engagement in further anti-apartheid activities during this time led the government to ban him from traveling outside the country (Stager, 2016). He also joined the Young Communist League of South Africa (Ivry, 2016). In 1952, he received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of the Witwatersrand on the topic of lattices. In 1954, he left South Africa to attend Cambridge University for a second PhD in Mathematics, also on the topic of lattices and topology, which he finished in 1959. He then moved to Geneva to work with the esteemed genetic epistemologist, Jean Piaget for four years. Finally, in 1964, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work with Marvin Minsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they established the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 1967, he was one of the developers of the Logo programming language. His work on Logo and development of his theory of constructionism (which extended Piaget’s constructivism) over the next few decades established him as one of the most influential educational technology researchers.
This man’s name is Seymour Papert. He’s known for being a pioneer in educational technology, as well as artificial intelligence. He’s probably less known for his activism, though this remained an important part of his work. According to Gary Stager (2016),
Although critical of institutional schooling, Papert’s research took place in schools, often with under-served populations of students. In 1986, he was invited to help Costa Rica reinvent its educational system, and from 1999 to 2002, Papert led an alternative, hightech, project-based learning environment inside a prison for teenagers (p. 308).
In any case, he’s neither Black nor forgotten. Hence, he is not the main focus of our story.
—
In 1958, a few years before Papert came to Cambridge, Massachusetts, a young Black man had to cut his PhD in philosophy short and left Cambridge for New York City. He had just received his Master’s degree in Philosophy at Harvard. In New York, he began teaching math at the elite Horace Mann School. To put this into context, in 1982, there were only four teachers of color in the whole school—one can only imagine the ethos in 1958! “Then, visiting a cousin in Virginia, he witnessed a sit-in and decided to devote his life to the African American cause.”
In 1960, he became the first field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi. His approach was at the grassroots level, meeting with Mississippi sharecroppers to encourage them to vote. His approach is aptly summarized by fellow activist Tom Hayden (2003),
When people asked him what to do, he asked them what they thought. At mass meetings, he usually sat in the back. In group discussions, he mostly spoke last. He slept on floors, wore sharecroppers' overalls, shared the risks, took the blows, went to jail, dug in deeply.
Like many civil rights activists, he was faced with violence and imprisonment, but he persisted. He is now remembered by some as a major force in the Civil Rights Movement, yet at the same time, perhaps he is not remembered enough—according to historian Taylor Branch who wrote a Pulitzer prize winning trilogy on Martin Luther King Jr., “I think his influence is almost on par with Martin Luther King, and yet he's almost totally unknown.” (Jones & Bowman, 2021). According to Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Encyclopedia:
Although he avoided publicity and was reluctant to assert himself as a leader, Robert Parris Moses became one of the most influential black leaders of the southern civil rights struggle. His vision of grassroots, community-based leadership differed from Martin Luther King’s charismatic leadership style. Nonetheless, King appreciated Moses’ fresh ideas, calling his “contribution to the freedom struggle in America” an “inspiration” (King, 21 December 1963).
This man was Robert Parris Moses, or, as he is often called, Bob Moses.
After leaving SNCC due to a difference in approach, Moses spent some years teaching mathematics in Tanzania. He then returned to Cambridge in 1976 and tried to start his PhD in philosophy of mathematics—but again, he left the program as a new opportunity opened up (Russell, 2009). In 1982, he won a MacArthur Fellowship (colloquially known as the “Genius Grant”), which fueled the second stage of his influential career—the Algebra Project:
When his eldest child, Maisha, entered the eighth grade in 1982, Mr. Moses was frustrated that her school did not offer algebra, so he asked the teacher to let her sit by herself in class and do more advanced work.
The teacher invited Mr. Moses -- who had just received a MacArthur “genius”' grant -- to teach Maisha and several advanced classmates. The Algebra Project was born. (Wilgoren, 2001)
The Algebra Project blended Moses’ commitment to teaching mathematics, his understanding of philosophy of mathematics and language—influenced by the famous philosopher and his Harvard professor Willard Van Orman Quine—and his grassroots approach to civil rights activism. He met with students where they were and showed them the value of mathematics literacy, just as he did with the sharecroppers and voting literacy. According to Moses,
In today's world, economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy…I believe that solving the problem requires exactly the kind of community organizing that changed the South in the 1960's. (Wilgoren, 2001)
As described by Moses, Kamii, Swap, and Howard (1989):
Moses gradually arrived at a five-step teaching and learning process that takes students from physical events to a symbolic representation of those events, thereby accelerating sixth graders' grasp of key concepts needed in the study of algebra. The five steps are:
1. Physical event
2. Picture or model of this event
3. Intuitive (idiomatic) language description of this event
4. A description of this event in regimented English
5. Symbolic representation of the event
The purpose of the five steps is to avert student frustration in "the game of signs," or the misapprehension that mathematics is the manipulation of a collection of mysterious symbols and signs. (p. 433)
This five-step approach was, in part, rooted in,
Quine's (1981) notion of “mathematization in situ.” “A progressive sharpening and regimenting of ordinary idioms: this is what led to arithmetic, symbolic logic, and set theory, and this is mathematization” (p. 150). Quine insisted that “set theory, arithmetic, and symbolic logic are all of them products of the straightforward mathematization of ordinary interpreted discourse . . .” (p. 151). (Moses et al, 1989, p. 433)
The Algebra Project continues to this day. Although Moses is somewhat known for his Civil Rights activism and math education work, he is not known as an educational technology innovator and he is probably not remembered by educational technology researchers. Where’s the technology in all this? Well in a broad sense, The Algebra Project is an educational technology. It is a new method (or set of methods) for teaching mathematics, for organizing students, and for getting students to talk about mathematics. In a more narrow sense, technology is part of the Algebra Project:
Mr. Moses has also developed a set of manipulatives and math games, the crux of which is a version of craps using a three-dimensional model of monomials, binomials and trinomials. Students roll dice of red, yellow and blue. Their scores translate into equations and, eventually, they calculate the probability of a WOFT -- win on the first try. A separate curriculum teaches ratios through African drumming. (Wilgoren, 2001)
So in some sense, Moses is a forgotten Black innovator in educational technology, and educational technologists can learn from Moses’ integration of grassroots civil rights efforts, philosophy of mathematics, and reform in math education. That is a worthwhile endeavor, but beyond the scope of this post. Instead, the focus of this post is actually on the meeting point of Papert and Moses.
—
Alan Clinton Shaw was born in 1963, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, as Moses was in the field getting sharecroppers to execute their right to vote, and just before Papert made his move from Geneva (psychology) to MIT (AI and educational technology). He was the son of Dr. Earl Shaw who would obtain his PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley in 1969 and would go on to become a prominent physicist. Dr. Earl Shaw was also politically active in his youth and became the president of the Black Student Union at UC Berkeley. From his father, Alan Shaw was inspired to be both an activist and a scientist. He went to Harvard University in the 1980s and became the President of the Black Student Association at Harvard in 1983. At the very meeting where he was voted in as president (although he was the only one running for the position), “Robert Moses, a well-known Black activist, also spoke briefly at the meeting. Moses, who was active with the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s, said he wanted to work with the several issue-oriented BSA subcommittees” (The Harvard Crimson, 1983). Perhaps this was Shaw’s first encounter with Moses. Soon thereafter, Shaw began tutoring for the Algebra Project in its first school, and eventually became the website manager, along with his wife Michelle Shaw (Wilgoren, 2001). During this time, as a Black activist and president of the Black Student Association, Shaw was also engaged in anti-apartheid activities, around 35 years after Papert’s youthful anti-apartheid activism.
Remaining in Cambridge, Shaw got his Master’s degree in Computer Science from MIT in 1988, and he completed his PhD in Media Arts and Sciences (at the recently established MIT Media Lab), under the direction of Seymour Papert, in 1995. Dr. Shaw’s career was very much influenced by Papert and Moses. Here is how he acknowledged their influence and support in his dissertation:
I also want to thank Seymour Papert for taking me on this journey in academic apprenticeship. My many years working with him have been filled with many wonderful constructions, both academic and social, as he has helped to guide me all the way to the finishing line. In many conversations I can remember Seymour telling me that he was quite confident that my work would be significant and socially relevant. I cannot express how important it was for me to hear those words. Seymour, you have been an intellectual mentor as well as a friend.
I also want to thank Bob and Janet Moses, Pamela Morgan and Bob Thornell for being there for me over and over again. All of you connect me to the tree of wisdom that has its roots in the history of our people's struggle. In your own way, you have each become parents to me and you have passed on to me a legacy of hope and belief in our people's future. (Shaw, 1995)
Dr. Shaw also acknowledged Mitchel Resnick—Papert’s former student and the lead creator of the popular Scratch programming environment— for his pivotal support as one of his thesis committee members.
His dissertation was titled “Social Constructionism and the Inner City: Designing Environments for Social Development and Urban Renewal” and introduced a new version of Papert’s notion of constructionism, which states that the best way to construct knowledge in one's head is by constructing external artifacts:
Constructionism offers an important bridge for the sociocultural and constructivist viewpoints by arguing that individual developmental cycles are enhanced by shared constructive activity in the social setting. Social constructionism adds further harmony to sociocultural and constructivist views by revealing that the social setting is also enhanced by the developmental activity of the individual. The duality of this interplay has important ramifications for urban social conditions. If the constructionist notion that shared constructions and social relations are key to individual development, then social settings that are marked by fractured and limited shared social activity and less cohesive social relations-as is the case in many urban settings-may present troubling developmental barriers. However, since the social setting is not immutable, introducing activities which are socially constructive may provide rectifying responses. (Shaw, 1995, p. 38)
As he elaborates further:
Through this lens, a group of subjects serve as active agents in the construction of outcomes and artifacts that produce a developmental cycle in the social setting, and this view explicitly includes as social constructions the social relations and social activities embedded in the social setting. To social constructionism, the social setting itself is an evolving construction. When the members of a social setting develop external and shareable social constructs, they engage the setting in a cycle of development which is critical to determining its ultimate form. (Shaw, 1995, p. 40)
Thus, just as individual constructions aid one's individual cognitive development, externally shared social constructions can aid the development of the social setting as a whole.
The abstract of Dr. Shaw's dissertation gives a fairly good picture of his work:
Using a theoretical formulation called “social constructionism,” I present a model for how individual cognitive developmental paradigms can be used to guide technological approaches intended to foster social development and urban renewal. In particular, I will describe certain processes, activities and tools-including a community computer networking system-that are designed to support constructionist social environments. In this thesis, I describe MUSIC (Multi-User Sessions In Community), a computer networking system designed around constructionist paradigms. This network focuses on neighborhood-based communities rather than on virtual communities. Computer networks present powerful organizational tools and collective models that can be useful in addressing local information infrastructure, instead of just national information infrastructure. This research attempts to address questions concerning how the same computers that enhance the independence of the individual might also be used to help the local community stay interdependent. Additionally, the intention of this research is to contribute to the discourse around addressing the difficulties faced by low income urban communities. (Shaw, 1995, p. 2)
As Dr. Shaw later described MUSIC,
The idea was that someone, when they log on, sees some buildings.There’s actually a visual presentation of the street. Each of the buildings represents a project that people are working on (Russell, 2009, p. 458)
Here are some actual images of MUSIC taken from Dr. Shaw’s website:
After implementing MUSIC in his Boston neighborhood, MUSIC was implemented in Newark, New Jersey:
By the end of its first year of operation, the Newark network had already seen over 7,300 log-ons and more than 21,400 pieces of E-mail. MUSIC discussion groups have been organized around parenting, AIDS, women’s and men’s issues (Circle of Sisters and Circle of Brothers). A program called Rights of Passage offers activities for guiding young people into adulthood. Spawned by the network were a community garden and talent show, potluck dinners and bake sales, a waste recycling project, a Thanksgiving drive to feed Newark’s homeless, even a collective birthday party for neighbors born in the same summer months. People log on to find out information about voter registration, or how to get high school equivalency diplomas (GEDs). Field trips to the Newark airport and Atlantic City have been organized. (Russell, 2009, p. 464)
MUSIC networks were being built in several other cities in the 1990s, including Cincinnati, Harlem, and San Francisco. Through his connection to Moses, Dr. Shaw also started to implement MUSIC into the Algebra Project in various cities, including Baltimore, San Francisco, and Jackson, Mississippi. As Moses recalls,
Alan and Michelle recently brought some computers down to Mississippi from the math lab at Brinkley. They showed the students how to set these up, and walked them through their MUSIC system. The computer provides an opening for the active participation of both students and teachers in the ongoing process of developing materials. So it’s not just receiving something, but there’s a real creation back and forth.
MUSIC has been forgotten in history. But the basic ideas are still prevalent in his work today. In the early 2000s, Dr. Shaw was a Co-PI on two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants on the Algebra Project with Bob Moses as PI. He then moved on to teaching computer science at Kennesaw State University. But recently, he has received two NSF-funded grants where he has tried to blend computer science ideas into the Algebra Project:
The second project is still ongoing. The description of this project clearly shows how Dr. Shaw’s work continues to blend between the ideas of Papert and the approach of Moses:
This research study will be carried out by using a specific type of Python-based microworld, that combines enactive-iconic representations with an experiential math curricular approach developed by the Algebra Project. The Algebra Project’s curricular approach uses a 5-step collaborative model for mathematics inquiry in the classroom. The first step begins with the students experiencing a shared event. Next, students examine the experience by representing the event pictorially, then through everyday language, then through an agreed upon regimentation of everyday language, and finally through the use of iconic and conventional symbolic representations and equations. This research will extend the Algebra Project’s curricular and pedagogical approach by providing students with enactive-iconic and diagrammatic mathematical constructions that they can manipulate virtually in a computational environment that they can use to further examine the mathematical features and logical structures involved.
Like Drs. Weusi-Puryear and Weusijana, perhaps because he did not maintain a steady career in educational technology and the learning sciences, Dr. Alan Shaw is not well-remembered. For example, he is not listed in this list of some of Seymour Papert’s students. However, he did influence other students of Papert and Resnick during his time at MIT, and he served on the thesis committee of two other Black scholars at MIT: Paula Hooper, who continues to be an active learning scientist and is now an assistant professor at Northwestern University, and Randal Pinkett, who is now a prominent business consultant, public speaker, and media personality. Moreover, the various implementations of MUSIC, Dr. Shaw's work for the Algebra Project, and other community organizing work that Dr. Shaw led have surely positively impacted the lives of many Black and underserved youth. His work with the Algebra Project continues to be at the cutting edge of constructionism, math education, and computer science education. His work today can have novel insights for educational technologists and learning scientists, and serve as a potential entry point into the innovative work behind the Algebra Project as well as Dr. Shaw’s forgotten theory of social constructionism. More broadly, the ideas developed by Moses and expanded by Shaw around how to integrate civil rights activism into math education can advance the agenda of educational technology and learning sciences that is rooted in participatory design and equity.
—
More broadly, the ideas developed by Moses and expanded by Shaw around how to integrate civil rights activism into math education can advance the agenda of educational technology and learning sciences that is rooted in participatory design and equity.
The focus of this series has been on Black innovators in educational technology, but this has been more than a set of stories of individuals; these stories are also about families. Dr. Weusijana was inspired to work in the learning sciences and educational technology because of his father’s work in that area, and because both of his parents and his maternal grandmother were educators. Dr. Alan Shaw was inspired by his father to be a Black activist and a scientist. Indeed, he found a way to combine the two by building computer programs that promote networked learning and activism in Black neighborhoods. This made his father proud; when asked to be interviewed by Dick Russell, Dr. Earl Shaw replied, “Sure, we can get together and talk, [b]ut who you really need to see is my son Alan. He’s much more important than me. He really is” (Russell, 2009, p. 444). As Alan Shaw recounts about his father, “His dream is to apply technology to the social conditions of black people. He would have loved to do that with physics, but it’s just a different overall endeavor” (Russell, 2009, p. 465). Bob Moses’ children also followed in his footsteps. His son, Omowale “Omo” Moses co-founded the Young People’s Project in 1996 when he was in his mid-20s, along with some eighth grade Algebra Project students [1]. The project, which was inspired by the civil rights movement and the Algebra Project, had teenagers act as “Math Literacy Workers” for younger students. In 2015, Omo Moses founded MathTalk, a company that “creates unique opportunities for young children and their families, particularly those in economically distressed communities, to discover and enjoy math anywhere” [2]. MathTalk is about embedding playful math learning experiences in the local community through technologies like augmented reality. If there was doubt that Bob Moses’ work qualifies as educational technology, surely his son’s does.
But this is not just a story of fathers and sons. Even more forgotten than these innovators are their wives who played important, but even less visible, roles in their careers. Dr. Weusi-Puryear’s wife, Omonike Weusi-Puryear, helped run the Edutek Corporation and was also a community college instructor at DeAnza College for over 15 years. Dr. Alan Shaw’s wife, Michelle Shaw, who also graduated from Harvard in 1985 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1989, worked with her husband to disseminate MUSIC to different neighborhoods as well as tutoring for the Algebra Project. As mentioned above, Dr. Shaw acknowledged the support of not only Bob Moses, but also his wife, Dr. Janet Moses, who was also a civil rights activist and a field secretary in Mississippi before marrying her husband. She was also a pediatrician at MIT and involved in the Algebra Project and Young People’s Project.
More broadly, becoming an innovator or an educator goes beyond the support and needs of one’s immediate family. Dr. Alan Shaw reminds us in his dissertation about the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”:
Without the context of many deep and meaningful relationships within a family and with other families and other individuals, a child's growth can be impaired. Obviously children need more than simply a great curriculum to develop themselves. They need a healthy social context. As parents and schools blame each other in the current debate over who is failing to properly raise the children, I would rather blame the lack of true cohesive communities, which we might as well call villages.
While villages are needed for raising children, perhaps we can say they are needed for anyone’s education and development, regardless of age. The innovators highlighted in this series were part of broader networks or villages. In addition to family, friends, and one’s local community, such villages include teachers—like Isaiah T. Young to whom Dr. Weusi-Puryear dedicated his dissertation—and mentors, like Suppes, Papert, and Moses. Through the inspiration and support of their villages, these innovators constructed new innovations to empower others. But there is a duality to social constructionism: through their work, these innovators also enacted social change for their villages and those around them—whether this was by using technology to create more enjoyable and relatable learning experiences, to help the unknowingly needy, or to connect members of the village to one another.
Through the inspiration and support of their villages, these innovators constructed new innovations to empower others. But there is a duality to social constructionism: through their work, these innovators also enacted social change for their villages and those around them.
Notes
Quote taken from https://math-talk.com/.
References
Hayden, T. (2003). Bob Moses. Nation, 277(3), 34-34.
Irvry, B. (2016). Remembering Seymour Papert: Revolutionary socialist and father of A.I. Forward. https://forward.com/culture/346666/remembering-seymour-papert-revolutionary-socialist-and-father-of-ai/
Jones, D. & Bowman, E. (2021) Bob Moses, civil rights leader and longtime educator, dies at 86. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/25/1020501110/bob-moses-1960s-sncc-civil-rights-leader-math-educator-dies-at-86
Moses, R., Kamii, M., Swap, S. M., & Howard, J. (1989). The Algebra Project: Organizing in the spirit of Ella. Harvard Educational Review, 59(4), 423-444.
Russell, D. (2009). Black genius: Inspirational portraits of African-American leaders. Skyhorse Publishing Inc..
Shaw, A. C. (1995). Social construction and the inner city: design environments for social development and urban renewal (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Stager, G. S. (2016). Seymour Papert (1928–2016). Nature, 537(7620), 308-308.
The Harvard Crimson. (1983). BSA. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1983/3/17/bsa-pthe-black-students-association-bsa/.
Wilgoren, J. (2001). Algebra Project: Bob Moses empowers students. New York Times Education Supplement, 30-2.