Seymour Papert’s Legacy: Thinking About Learning, and Learning About Thinking | Transformative Learning Technologies Lab

If a historian were to draw a line connecting Jean Piaget’s work on developmental psychology to today’s trends in educational technology, the line would simply be labeled “Papert.” And perhaps the most remarkable thing about that line would be the other points it intersects along its course of more than fifty years.

While Papert’s innovation, scholarship and wisdom is widely recognized across the globe and among scientists, his half century of contributions is largely invisible. It is not that educators disagree with Papert’s theories or recommendations, they just ignore him entirely. This ‘idea aversion’ (a term of Papert’s) is manifest by Papert’s absence from teacher education texts, educational technology publications and school reform literature.

Gary Stager

I know Papert because I was an unschooler thirty years ago when I was parent lost in the woods but damned sure my children needed way better than they were going to get where I lived.  He was required reading for those who want to do no harm as well as help their own kids learn.

I think Stager is absolutely on the level with the quote above.  There will be many obits and “we-will-miss-hims”, but not nearly enough “we barely knew ye” encomia. And very few will acknowledge that he was an iconoclast among educators and a damned firebrand against the status quo.  He did make mindstorms like the one below.