Learningland
David Ng on Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms
An article of David Ng’s showed up in my feed last week. As it was about to Seymour Papert (Where Seymour Papert Got It Wrong), I gave it a read.
(I must confess to being a follower of things MIT since I discovered SCRATCH in my first year teaching Information and Computer Technologies. People and happenings at MIT Media Lab have profoundly shaped how I teach — but that is a story for another day.)
In the fourth paragraph I was struck by the sentence:
… there’s no such thing as easy or hard subjects, only domains with abundant materials or sparse materials.
This statement encapsulated an idea that I have been trying to keep front-of-mind in my own teaching; one that provides me with an argument against many of my students’ beliefs that they are incapable of or unsuitable for learning Math, Science or Computer Science. As such, I felt it necessary to understand what Ng was saying. What follows is my attempt to do that.
Ng’s thesis is that many have missed the core message of Papert’s Mindstorms, and, states outright:
There is a lot to learn from Papert and his amazing body of work — but not if we continue misunderstanding him.
Ng follows with what he sees as the first of two theses present in Mindstorms, as stated above, that there are domains of learning “with abundant materials or sparse materials.”
Ng presents Papert as arguing that anyone can learn Math as naturally and easily as children learn French in France if they grow up immersed in an environment rich in math materials, a “Mathland”; the problem is that our culture is actually deeply mathophobic and that people who grow up in a mathophobic culture are generally incapable of building “Mathland” materials. Ng continues with the second thesis:
Because a computer can be programmed to take on different functions, maybe children can use computers to build their own materials, bypassing adults and inoculating themselves from the mathophobic culture.
It is here that Ng presents Papert’s blind spot — that children are “no more capable of building Mathland materials than the adults around them” and the root of the misunderstanding, namely that mathophobia “means the fear of learning, not just the fear of math. “Math” is the root word for learning in Greek”; that many confuse the computer as the tool to make (math) learning easier, not as a tool for creating many of the materials that enable understanding and learning.
When it comes to learning, Ng states that he believes, as Papert did, that it needs to be active, relevant, and personal. He counters, though, that agency alone is not sufficient for learning; there need to be the materials for learning as well and that when learners have access to abundant and diverse materials, they will naturally construct their own understanding.
Ng contends that Papert’s first thesis and the reason for developing “Mathland”, is that anyone can learn anything simply and easily if they are immersed in an environment rich in materials. As such, the result of the misunderstanding and the crux of the problem becomes clear.
In a culture steeped in mathophobia, learning is perceived as neither simple nor easy. Learning takes ability and grit; it requires having an aptitude for what is to be learned and the fortitude to survive the work of learning. In this culture, achieving a “Mathland”, or rather a “Learningland” where any and all can learn anything they wish is impossible.
Ng finishes with:
We can’t transform education and learning if we leave this cultural mathophobia in place — and the surest way to undo it is to embrace Papert’s first thesis.
Which brings me full circle. How can I use this to support to students as they learn Math, Science or Computer Science? How do I build the Learningland materials my student need and deserve?
That is what remains to be seen. I will keep you informed.
