Every maker of video games knows something that the makers of curriculum don't seem to understand. You'll never see a video game being advertised as being easy. Kids who do not like school will tell you it's not because it's too hard. It's because it's--boring
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that engagement, not difficulty, is key to learning.
Seymour Papert highlights a crucial difference between the world of video games and formal education: while video games attract players by presenting challenges that are fun and engaging, educational curricula often fail to captivate students due to their lack of excitement. The quote suggests that the appeal of video games lies in their ability to provide stimulating experiences, contrasting with the often monotonous nature of traditional schooling, which leads to disinterest among students.
In practice
This quote can be used during educational workshops to emphasize the importance of engaging students.
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.
Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization...I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities.
The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a [student] of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.
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.
A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.
Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. Libraries change lives for the better.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
I feel like I am walking in some amazing footsteps of writers who have come before me, like S.E. Hinton, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Paul Curtis, Richard Peck and Kate DiCamillo, who I love.
If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.
There is always a place I can take someone's curiosity and land where they end up enlightened when we're done. That's my challenge as an educator. No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.
It is easier to build a boy than to mend a man.
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