We Can’t Afford to Lose Seymour Papert

by Andy Carvin, 9:54AM

Yesterday afternoon I heard the terrible news that education technology pioneer Seymour Papert has been gravely injured in a motorbike accident. Educators from across the blogosphere have been profoundly shaken and are praying for his recovery.

There are few people, if anyone, that are as influential in education technology as Seymour Papert. A protege of famed psychologist Jean Piaget, Papert has been a leading thinker in how children learn for 40 years. He was one of the first educators to explore the learning theories of constructivism and constructionism, particularly in the context of education technology. In the 1960s, he began advocating the notion that children learn best when they get to build upon their own knowledge, gaining new skills through creating things rather than through methods such as rote memorization. Theorists such as Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey had pioneered the early work in this area, but Papert began to wonder if computers could be used as tools for students to construct their own knowledge.

In 1971, while working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab he founded with Marvin Minsky, Papert co-authored a paper called 20 Things to Do With a Computer. Back then, computers were used to process data and perform complex math, but Papert had another vision: to help a child program a mechanical turtle. This work, which resulted in his development of the LOGO programming language, was a radical shift in the computing world, demonstrating that these technologies could be used as teaching tools, with students directing how they get used.

Over the years, Papert has published many groundbreaking works on learning theory and education technology, including Mindstorms and The Children’s Machine. In more recent years, he became the spirtual leader of the one-laptop-per-child movement, inspiring both the Maine middle school laptop program and MIT’s $100 laptop initiative. The $100 laptop, in fact, has been renamed the Children’s Machine in honor of his work.

Earlier this week, the 78-year-old Papert was attending a conference in Hanoi when he was hit by a motorbike while crossing the street. He sustained serious head injuries and was rushed Hanoi’s French Hospital for brain surgery. He remains in serious condition, in a medically-induced coma. The thought of Papert, of all people, sustaining permanent brain injuries is truly shattering.

Word has begun to spread around the Internet, with supporters and critics alike pulling for his recovery. Sheryl Nussbaum Beach writes:

I am so grieved. Papert was instrumental in shaping my philosophy of education and drove most of my originial thinking on how children learn. I just showed a clip tonight to Alabama teachers on project-based learning tonight that has him featured throughout. Please watch it, it is amazing. Anytime he was keynoting I went to hear him speak and I dreamed of studying under him. I work his ideas into every presentation I make. Please remember him in your thoughts or prayers.

David Rothman writes on TeleRead:

I’ve believed in the $100 laptop project despite my worries over curriculum-related matters and other issues. And to my delight, the project has defied the odds and seems on the cusp of success. Imagine what it could mean for e-books in developing countries. May Seymour Papert, too, defy the odds and enjoy a full recovery. One of the main forces behind the project, he is in a medically induced coma and feared near death after a motorbike hit him in the chest during a visit to Hanoi.

From David Warlick:

For nearly all of the 25 year’s I have been involved with educational technology, Seymour Papert was there. Mindstorms was the first book I read as part of my graduate degree.

In the UK, Marc Eisenstadt of Open University writes:

Papert was one of the strongest influences on my career - I had the great fortune to meet him a few times in my formative years as a graduate student, and the directions I pursued (especially on teaching novices programming) were a direct spinoff of his profound thinking and activities. Let’s hope, along with the numerous others writing and reading about this, that he recovers from this tragic accident, and soon.

OLPC News, which has been critical of the $100 laptop initiative, offered their solemn prayers:

May he soon regain his faculties and return to the One Laptop Per Child program. The OLPC implementation miracle needs him, now, more than ever….

This is terrible news. I recently posed a number of questions to him about learning and the OLPC and had been impressed by his answers, to the point that it helped to assuage some of the fears I had about the role of the teacher in OLPC nations.

I hope he pulls through. My thoughts are with him and his family.

Like Warlick, Eisenstadt and others, I have been also been profoundly influenced by Papert. I first became familiar with his work while taking cognitive science courses with Roger Schank at Northwestern in the early 90s, and incorporated many of Papert’s ideas into my very first website, EdWeb (1994), which explored the potential of the World Wide Web as a tool for creating socially-relevant knowledge. A couple of years after creating the website, I got to meet Papert at a conference organized by one of my friends, who invited him to deliver the keynote. Here’s the story as I recalled it on my blog yesterday:

When the session was done, he had the opportunity to wander the conference and see other presenters. Instead, he wanted to go to the playroom where a group of kids were playing with toys, both high-tech and low-tech. In a matter of moments, Seymour dropped to the floor and got on his hands and needs. He then passed his time by playing with the toys while masterfully getting the kids to talk about what play means to them. I sat down against the wall, legs crossed, and watched him work his magic. I learned more about education from observing him construct legos buildings with these kids than any book I’ve ever read on epistemology.

May Seymour be blessed with a full and speedy recovery. We can’t afford to lose him. -andy

Filed under :