MINDSTORMS: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

by Seymour Papert ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 22, 1980

Seymour Papert is a mathematician (M.I.T.), a computer scientist interested in artificial intelligence, and an educator who studied with Piaget some years ago. This versatility has led to the present work: part personal philosophy, part program, and part tract on how we ought to be teaching math and science to children. Papert engages the reader at once by recounting his delighted discovery of the workings of gears as a little child. It was the effective component, not just the cognitive one, that was important to him. With that as prologue, he goes on to envision a future in which children will learn complex concepts by using individual powerful computers. Today, says Papert, children who are exposed to computers in the classroom are programmed by them--linked to a video screen which provides dull drills and instant corrections. Instead, the child of the future will learn by programming the computer. As illustration, he points to a machine language called LOGO which enables elementary-school children to train a ""turtle"" (either a mechanical cybernetic robot or a triangle on a screen) to execute skilled movements. In teaching the turtle, the child thinks through--and often physically enacts--the steps necessary to trace a square or a triangle or a circle, absorbing notions of angle, point, line, and so on. ""Debugging"" the computer program--finding inevitable errors--becomes a meaningful exercise towards a goal, a far cry from the shame commonly associated with getting a wrong answer. Examples of other programs to teach more complex material (such as Newton's laws of motion), along with illustrations of how computer thinking can transfer to other skills, provide Papert with good ammunition for his case. What makes the prospect visionary, however (which he concedes), is that its realization would require a major curriculum reform and considerable recruitment of personnel to provide training--plus the investment in the machines themselves. Some may argue, too, that the computer is more valuable as a learning tool for the spatial and dynamic aspects of math and science (geometry, motion, etc.), while much of school math remains calculations with numbers. Nonetheless, it's exhilarating to read one man's prescription for the creative and pleasurable use of computers for kids.

Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1980

ISBN: 0465046746

Page Count: -

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION