I probably first heard about Seymour Papert from an Alan Kay talk. At the time I was really enchanted by the broad metaphorical approach to computing and programming that characterized the style of Alan Kay’s talks. Furthermore, I really enjoyed different programming language styles, especially when they were able to more succinctly and intuitively and elegantly express concepts. It was mind-states like these that drove me to read Mindstorms by Seymour Papert but what I found was so much more.
This book is seriously good.
The reason for this is Papert’s breadth and scope to his argument. Not only does Papert approaches the topic of a computer centered educational transformation like an engineer of learning environments with a background in child psychology, Papert is also able to extend himself into the sociology and philosophy of this topic.
You might miss the point of this book if you think it’s about his programming language, LOGO, or about how to better teach math or how to make learning fun or a utopian vision of a computer literate society.
The point of Mindstorms is that computers, if used effectively, provide a valuable opportunity to teach humanity the skill of debugging. Debugging is the ability to playfully and through exploration iterate world views. It brings in the individual a lightness in errors that allows the individual to approach errors free of fear and instead with playfulness and ultimately makes fixing these errors and learning across all domains likely and common.
Why is this a new idea? The idea that computers can make learning better is not radical but it is low resolution. Low resolution in regards to the psychology of a learning child and the application of that psychology to the learning environment of a specific domain. We see from Papert’s specifics that the normal ideas that come out of the question “How can computing make education better?” are far too narrow. It isn’t about the computer teaching and in a sense programming the child. It’s about the child programming the computer and in doing so establishing proficiency in the art of intellectual model building.
Papert tells a story about a sixth grader named Deborah who had problems with school learning and found most of what she did at school frightening. Through the independence afforded to her in the world of LOGO programming commands she emerged several weeks later with a sense of confidence that showed not only in programming projects but in her relationship to everything else she did in school. This is the true power of computer learning environments.
Since reading this book and resonating with it deeply, I have come to believe that I experienced something rare and valuable from my time spent programming games and applications on my TI-89 graphing calculator. Despite the impoverished capabilities of my programming environment, I gained immensely from the experience because it was personally meaningful and created a world in which I could associate failing with play and exploring with learning deeply. Papert convinced me of the universality of this type of experience. That everyone if given an experience like mine would benefit immensely.
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” ― Carl R. Rogers
5/5
