“Seymour, Seymour, Seymour:” His Ideas Will Endure

Seymour Papert co-invented the Logo programming language, arguably the first programming language designed expressly to support children's thinking about mathematics. He was also the promulgator extraordinaire of the idea that children should use computers to construct artifacts in pursuit of constructing meaning rather than using computers simply as high-tech flash cards. He passed away on July 31, 2016 at age 88. But his vision of children using computers to discover and create is especially relevant today as machine learning algorithms are used to more energetically drill facts into our children’s heads.

“Seymour, Seymour, Seymour.” No, that chant by hundreds of individuals wasn’t heard at a soccer match or a baseball game. Rather, teachers chanted at Logo conferences as Seymour Papert would take the stage to speak! Teachers just loved Seymour. His impish, eye-twinkling smile, his powerful ideas, his personal warmth and magnetic charisma, his seemingly boundless energy. Sigh. It’s hard to imagine a world without “Seymour, Seymour, Seymour.”

Fortunately, he shared much with us. Read Mindstorms and you will be forever changed. Yes, read Mindstorms — a 35-year-old-book about computers — and you will be changed. Why? The ideas that Seymour created in talking about how “microcomputers” can change education, can change teaching and learning, can change children and adults are as fresh today as they were in 1980.

Indeed, in today’s technology-driven, ever-changing world, there is a real urgency that we simply must fix our educational system and educate all children, not just the children of privilege. And just as the computer has been the key to transforming industries and organizations, computers can be the mechanism — as described in Mindstorms and Seymour’s other writings — to fix the educational system. 

Seymour created ideas and organizations. Here are three of our favorite Seymour observations:

1. “The word constructionism is a mnemonic for two aspects of the theory of science education underlying this project. From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product.” — Seymour Papert

2. “My basic idea is that programming is the most powerful medium of developing the sophisticated and rigorous thinking needed for mathematics, for grammar, for physics, for statistics, for all the "hard" subjects. ... In short, I believe more than ever that programming should be a key part of the intellectual development of people growing up.” — Seymour Papert

3. “… [learning] happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity…” — Seymour Papert and Idit Harel

As well, Seymour was a co-founder in 1982 of Le Centre Mondial Informatique et Ressources Humaines, an organization based in Paris designed to bring computing to the third world. He was also a co-founder in 2005 of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which set out to put a “connected laptop computer [in the hands of] every child in the world.”

And, Seymour was a mentor who had mentees too numerous to count. No surprise, a number of his mentors have continued to explore and expand on his ideas:

• Uri Wilensky: Inventor of NetLogo, an extension of Logo (co-invented by Papert) that enables learners to explore systems and network effects.
• David Cavallo: The feet-on-the-ground guy that made it happen for the OLPC implementations worldwide.
• Mitch Resnick: Inventor of Scratch, a visual programming language accessible to virtually anyone and everyone.
• Idit Harel: Founder and CEO of MamaMedia, the first Internet-based, interactive, programmable, learning games platform and, more recently, Globaloria, an organization/platform that supports learning programming in a game-based manner.

But what will endure? Le Centre Mondial kicked off with support from the president of France, Francois Mitterrand, and a grand vision. But then politics, ambition and nationalism took over, and Le Centre closed its doors in short order in 1986. OLPC raised many millions of dollars and put 3 million computers in the “hands of children” in Costa Rico, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, Rwanda,  etc. That’s a pretty amazing feat! But again, flaws surfaced; by design, teachers weren’t included in the doling out of XO laptops and the “hands of children” weren’t enough to sustain the project. So, in 2014, for all intents and purposes, OLPC was no more.

Now, Seymour was big on “powerful ideas” — ideas that can be transformative, catalytic, cathartic. For example, Seymour tells us that for him, “gears” — those toothed wheels that come in all sizes and mediate energy change — were a powerful idea. More personally, for us, “constructionism” has been a powerful idea that has transformed and informed our work; everything that we have done with mobile learning has been about enabling children — and teachers — to construct artifacts and in so doing, construct understanding. In the comments field, share with us, dear reader, your favorite Seymour powerful idea.

We end as we began: Read Mindstorms, and you will be forever changed … and, thank you, “Seymour, Seymour, Seymour.”