RENOWNED COMPUTER INNOVATOR TELLS HOW TO SAVE THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION AND
TRANSFORM OUR SCHOOLS

What ever happened to the computer revolution? The revolution in learning
that was foreseen when computer usage became widespread has so far failed
to transpire. While other areas of human endeavor--medicine,
telecommunications, entertainment--have taken advantage of dramatic
technological advances in recent years, and in many ways even spurred
those advances, education has not. MIT Professor Seymour Papert asks why
schools have failed to take advantage of the computer's capacity to engage
children in a new kind of active learning, and tells how to bring about
such a change now.

In THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer
(BasicBooks; June 16, 1993), Seymour Papert, the inventor of the LOGO
computer language, asks us to reconsider the nature of education. The
problem with education today, maintains Papert, is that the child is
treated as a "consumer" of knowledge instead of a "creator," and teachers
"tend to view the child as an empty vessel into which they hope to pour
all the information the child may one day need." As an educator, Papert
has sought to understand the difference between how children learn in
school, and how they learn on their own, and to find a way to tap into a
child's natural enthusiasm for learning.

One extracurricular pursuit that has captured the attention of children to
a degree that has mystified adults, and more often than not alarmed their
parents, are video games. But Papert urges us to take a new view of
Nintendo and other video games, and see them as an educational aid, rather
than as a distraction: "Any adult who thinks one of these games is easy
need only sit down and try to master one. Most are hard, with complex
information--as well as technique--to be mastered." According to Papert,
such games empower children by allowing them to test out ideas within
prefixed rules and structures in a way that few toys can. Moreover, video
games offer children an "entryway" into the world of computers.

Although there are now some three million computers in schools, educators
still haven't figured out how to use them. Too often, computers are
treated as just one more subject for children to learn or be tested on,
and many educators have never seen or imagined any alternative use for
them. In THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE, Papert argues that "computers" should not
become a subject like math or history, but should be integrated into all
areas of the classroom. Computers can make the greatest difference in a
child's education when they are used as a tool to teach children about
numbers and letters; and, most important, to teach them how to think. By
engaging children in activities that challenge them to work through
problems, computers can teach children how to learn. In this way, children
acquire knowledge in much the same manner that an infant learns about his
or her world--through exploration.

Today, Papert points out, "the most important skill determining a person' s
life pattern has already become the ability to learn new skills...to deal
with the unexpected. This will be increasingly true in the future: the
competitive ability is the ability to learn." In a work that is rich with
anecdotes and stories of learning and discovery, and of children with
different strengths collaborating with one another, Seymour Papert
provides a "how-to" lesson for parents and educators who seek to provide
children with a richer, more stimulating learning experience than is
common today. THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE offers a blueprint for a better way
of learning for our children. If our hospitals, movies, and automobiles
have all benefitted from technological progress, surely our children
deserve the same.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE:

"In this imaginative, even playful work, enriched with examples from the
classroom and from personal experience, Papert argues that literacy is not
identical with "letteracy"-- that reading may not be the "principal access
route to education for students." -- Publishers Weekly

"The genially unorthodox author of Mindstorms (1983) again makes a
stimulating case for computers as a primary route to knowledge, revising
and expanding earlier observations in view of disappointing school
policies of the past dozen years....Even those who resist Papert's belief
that the foundation of modern schooling is faulty will agree with his
central theme that the ability to learn new skills is the most critical
skill of all--and that computers have a unique, accelerating role to play
in developing that ability." -- Kirkus Reviews

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Seymour Papert, inventor of the Logo computer language for children, is a
mathematician and an influential figure in the fields of artificial
intelligence and educational computing. He worked for several years with
Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. In the early
1960's, Papert joined MIT, where he cofounded the Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory with Marvin Minsky, with whom he coauthored the book
Perceptrons. In 1988, he was named Lego Professor of Learning Research.

In 1990, Seymour Papert received a $3 million research grant from Nintendo
to study the relationship between play and learning in children. Papert is
the recipient of numerous other awards and grants, including the Marconi
International Fellowship Award in 1981 and the Louis Robinson Award in
1991.

Papert is also the author of Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful
Ideas (Basic Books, 1980; Second Edition, 1983), and frequently publishes
articles about learning, thinking, mathematics and science education,
computer science, and artificial intelligence.

THE CHILDREN'S MACHINE: 
Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer 
by Seymour Papert 
Publication Date: June 16, 1993 
ISBN: 0-465-01830-0 
Price: $22.50, cloth 

BasicBooks, 10 East 53rd St, New York, NY 10022-5299
212-207-7057;  fax: 212-207-7203

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