Seymour Papert > Quotes

“Every maker of video games knows something that the makers of curriculum don't seem to understand. You'll never see a video game being advertised as being easy. Kids who do not like school will tell you it's not because it's too hard. It's because it's--boring”
― Seymour Papert

“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, The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer

“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, The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer

“Nothing bothers me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths 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

“You can’t think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something.”
― Seymour Papert

“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 mastery 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, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

“The mathophobia endemic in contemporary culture blocks many people from learning anything they recognize as ‘math,’ although they may have no trouble with mathematical knowledge they do not perceive as such.”
― Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

“Progressive teachers knew very well how to use the computer for their own ends as an instrument of change; School knew very well how to nip this subversion in the bud.”
― Seymour Papert, The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer

“An unknown but certainly significant proportion of the population has almost completely given up on learning. These people seldom, if ever engage in deliberate learning and see themselves as neither competent at it nor likely to enjoy it. The social and personal cost is enormous.

Although negative self-images can be overcome, in the life of an individual they are extremely robust and powerfully self-reinforcing. Deficiency becomes identity: “I can’t learn French, I don’t have an ear for languages;” “I could never be a businessman, I don’t have a head for figures;”…

If people believe firmly enough that they cannot do math, they will usually succeed in preventing themselves from doing whatever they recognize as math. The consequences of such self-sabotage is personal failure, and each failure reinforces the original belief. And such beliefs may be most insidious when held not only by individuals, but by our entire culture.”
― Seymour Papert

“It is 100 years since John Dewey began arguing for the kind of change that would move schools away from authoritarian classrooms with abstract notions to environments in which learning is achieved through experimentation, practice and exposure to the real world. I, for one, believe the computer makes Dewey’s vision far more accessible epistemologically. It also makes it politically more likely to happen, for where Dewey had nothing but philosophical arguments, the present day movement for change has an army of agents. The ultimate pressure for the change will be child power.”
― Seymour Papert

“But the interesting cases are those where the conflict remains obstinately in place however much we ponder the problem. These are the cases where we are tempted to conclude that "intuition cannot be trusted." In these situations we need to improve our intuition, to debug it, but the pressure on us is to abandon intuition and rely on equations instead.”
― Seymour Papert

“You can't think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something.”
― Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

“An important component in the history of knowledge is the development of techniques that increase the potency of “words and diagrams.” What is true historically is also true for the individual: An important part of becoming a good learner is learning how to push out the frontier of what we can express with words. From this point of view the question about the bicycle is not whether or not one can “tell” someone “in full” how to ride but rather what can be done to improve our ability to communicate with others (and with ourselves in internal dialogues)”
― Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas

“You can't think seriously about thinking without thinking about thinking about something.”
― Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

“Children begin their lives as eager and competent learners. They have to learn to have trouble with learning in general and mathematics in particular.”
― Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas