Laptop flap: they also serve who stand and gripe

There are times when one has to take the kind of position that is often wrongly associated with the digital culture: black/white, yes/no, zero/one. For example, the kids will get those laptops or they won’t. One is for or against. But when you read this column the laptops will have been delivered to the first nine schools and the anti-laptop party in the Legislature will have done what it can to cut the funding. It is a good time to stand back and take a less partisan look at what was gained and what was lost and at where it all might be going.

Although the fighting has been unpleasant, I believe the state has benefited from the intensity of the discussion it provoked. In fact, when historians of education look back with careful attention to what happened in Maine (which they certainly will do) they might conclude that the most resounding triumph of this initiative is what it did to how people think about computers in relation to education. There is a huge difference between discussing whether a school should have a computer for every five students or for every four or even for every two student vs. discussing whether each student should have a personal computer. Five or four or two are different answers to the same question; the laptop issue poses an altogether different question.

I have been successful in using an analogy to bring out this difference. Imagine discussing how many writing instruments there should be per classroom or whether children should have writing instruments only at school or at home as well! The real meaning of the laptop initiative is that it opens the way to a future in which the computer plays the role of the pen or pencil in our culture. It will change the way we do everything, perhaps even more than the advent of writing changed the way we do everything. Of course the laptop initiative is only a step in this direction. But it is a real step, whereas any idea of sharing computers is a step in the opposite direction. It is a step away from the idea that in the future the primary medium of expression will be more like a presentday computer (though surely greatly evolved beyond that) than like pencil and paper.

I hope I get some indignant letters disagreeing with me about this interpretation of the meaning of the initiative. Certainly many of its partisans have a different view. For example a major organization in the state recently based its support for the initiative on the argument that success in the workplace will require knowing how to use computers. Surely so, but there are far less expensive ways to learn how to “use computers.” We don’t have pencils in schools so that students will know how to “use pencils” when they go to work. Of course, presentday workers need to know how to use pencils; but there is very much more than this to literacy.

Another example: I recently had a run-in with a strong partisan of the laptop initiative who is participating in developing an educational assessment for middle school students based on the same old content and even (which I find especially hard to imagine) on using pencil and paper tests. I believe that with more powerful tools for knowledge work we should be rethinking what our students should learn and inventing better ways to judge their success. I know many people who argue that “the computer is only a tool … technology should serve the curriculum not drive it.” But in my view the present-day curriculum is driven by technology … the old-fashioned technology of pencil and paper.

The big triumph to date has been launching discussion on a statewide scale. Maine is unique in having done this. Many individual schools in many countries have adopted “the laptop option.” But as a state we can raise bigger issues. The real defeat of the initiative will be if the intensity of discussion now abates and Maine settles for following the more superficial uses that have been adopted by even the best of these schools from away. As a state we can reexamine the content of our curriculum and our means of testing in ways that are not open to individual schools. Of course there will be many different ideas about how to do this. But that will be something worth fighting about.

P.S. Dear reader: Your school district is developing, as it is by law obliged to do, a local educational assessment. I urge you to find out whether it is taking the presence of the laptops into account.

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.