It takes whole state to raise schools

The question I hear most often about the state’s plan to provide students with personal computers sounds sensible enough: “What will they do to make sure that the computers are well used?” But my response is to reject it as the wrong question. They, presumably meaning the governor and the Department of Education and the personnel of your local school, are doing a great deal. But whatever they do cannot be enough. The right question is “what will we – the people of the state, all of us – do to make this project work?”

We must stop thinking of the plan as “The Governor’s Laptop Initiative.” It is time for a change of ownership. The people of Maine must learn to think of it as their project … as Maine’s project. Angus King deserves great credit for the vision and political courage needed to launch this plan. But he would be the first to understand that the greatest honor the people of the state could offer him would be to appropriate his plan and make it theirs. He would also be the first to understand that this is what would give it the best chance of achieving greatness.

Appropriation starts with pride of ownership. This is true especially of the students themselves. If the youngsters are proud of what they are doing they will be off to a good start in doing it well. We should all help them know that the eyes of the education world far beyond the boundaries of Maine or of the USA on them. We should all help them feel that this is their project and their opportunity to exert real influence on the world: how well they do will make a difference to whether their younger siblings and millions of others all over the world are given computers.

Numerous education reforms have failed because parents do not understand them. This project, too, is at risk in families where parents may not have had the kind of experience that leads to appreciating how computers can augment intellectual work. The table will be turned if all of us who have personally experienced the power of the computer take the responsibility of talking about it to friends who have not. Sharing knowledge and experiences could do more than improve what the kids do with their machines; talking about the project could serve as a catalyst for turning our neighborhoods into “learning communities” – thus producing a fall-out that goes far beyond machines.

Commissioner Albanese, in an inspired move, has recruited one of the state’s most distinguished school administrators and obtained a large grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help teachers appropriate the computers to their own styles of teaching. But many will be able to use more encouragement and more technical help than the state can give them. This opens a great opportunity for the people to supplement what the state can do. For example, as a step in this direction I am participating through the University of Maine in a plan to set up a “buddy system” to offer any teacher who wants it a computer-savvy online volunteer helper. But the spirit of the Internet world is not to wait for academics or state bureaucrats to set up this kind of thing: just do it yourself! Even something as simple as a friendly visit to a school will give encouragement and might help out with a problem.

Helping works best as a two-way street. My colleague Jim Moulton is working on mobilizing kids with computers and the skill to use them in the service of research on lobsters. The kids will improve their computer skills, their research skills and their sense of service to their state even as they contribute to the progress of the research. I know of dozens, and there must be hundreds or even thousands of activities in the state that could enter into this kind of mutually beneficial relationship with our youth, whether through schools or through community organizations or by individual contact. This is the true magic of the computers: kids will be able to do more than we thought they could. They will learn more by doing more.

Some people in fields related to education are already making plans to shift direction in ways that will help (and also benefit from) the initiative. Researchers in universities who have been engaged in developing new educational materials are putting a new slant into their work by focusing them on the specific situation that will be created by the presence of the laptops. At least one software company in the state is considering the opportunity of partnering with Maine’s schools to produce a new wave of educational materials for a national and even international market. Maine can take a position of leadership in all sectors of the evolution of twenty-first century education. In the academic sector it could attract talent to the state. Our universities could become the place of choice for students who want to prepare for the schools of the future. In the economic sphere we could see the spawning of new business. And, of course, our schools could become the sites of world-class innovations in the new area of adapting learning to the conditions provided by the new knowledge technologies.

The idea of giving every student a laptop was not invented in Maine. More schools have adopted this policy elsewhere than there are schools in Maine.

But Maine is the first to have adopted the “laptop option” on a statewide basis. If we can mobilize the intellectual resources and the patriotic pride of a whole state – and we are not talking about just any state – we will achieve hugely better results. We will provide the best proof of what can be done and once more confirm the old maxim. As goes Maine so goes the nation. But this time it will be: so goes the world.

Seymour Papert is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Distinguished Computer Scientist at the University of Maine and a member of Maine Learning Technology Task Force. He may be contacted at Papert@midmaine.com.