The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge. Seymour Papert More Quotes by Seymour Papert More Quotes From Seymour Papert Until very recently, most knowledge was inaccessible to people who couldn't read text. But this is changing. The computer opens up other channels of gaining knowledge. If someone is blind, we now have very good machines that will read to him. If someone can't recognize letters, he also will have access to knowledge through sound and images. Seymour Papert machinessoundpeople Similarly, computer literacy courses tend to produce computer people who know a lot about computers or a piece of software but they don't help people become fluent with the machine. Seymour Papert computer-literacymachinespeople I think we should allow for schools within schools, where 100 out of 500 kids may be organized by the way they work and what they do, and what they do often is more progressive. I would like to see a lot of kids of different ages, maybe even some adults, work together on a project. Seymour Papert kidsschoolthinking This frenzy about cyberporn indicates some deeper fear of adults as they see kids become more independent and learn things they never learned. I think those fears also reflect a failure to communicate. Parents should be able to say to their kids: "There is stuff out there that we don't look at, and if you find yourself looking at it or someone approaching you about it, then let's talk about it." Seymour Papert independentkidsthinking BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing. Seymour Papert typingprogrammingcomputer Daddy always asks me and I never know what to say”. Seymour Papert ask-medaddyknows If a kid really is retarded and can only come up to a certain level, he will still have more success if what he learns is connected with something important to him. Seymour Papert levelsimportantkids Undoubtedly, there are kids with intellectual deficiencies or neurological problems. But a lot of kids shunted into special education classes are deficient only in a willingness to conform to the school pattern.They are just honest, brave kids who say, "I just won't take that, and I don't believe in what you're doing." If you give them an alternative to the usual classroom, they break free of a lot of inhibitions and bad associations, and they begin to learn. Seymour Papert believekidsschool I don't like MTV, and I don't like the culture that goes with it. It's OK in very small doses, maybe. Nevertheless, it's a social reality and has influenced how kids perceive things around them, the pace of life and the way people do things. Seymour Papert mtvkidsreality Often kids in a computer lab learn about word-processing, but if they want to write an essay, they write it by hand. This is exactly the opposite of what you want them to learn. They're approaching the computer as just another abstract school subject. Seymour Papert writingkidsschool
