Public discussion needed on laptops’ benefits

Two articles in last Thursday’s Bangor Daily News highlight what the laptop initiative is about. “Lawmakers seek to break laptop pact” tells of how Reps. Philip Cressey and Brian Duprey are investigating how the state can still wriggle out of its contract with Apple.

The article attributes to one of them a succinct statement of the “argument” most often advanced against the laptops: “We don’t need laptops in Hampden. We can use the cash.” I have no doubt that he can use cash – poor or rich, which of us can’t? The question is whether he would use the cash for a better purpose than what would come out of giving Hampden’s kids laptops. I challenge him to engage with me in a public discussion of what benefits can come from the laptops and what alternative ways he can suggest for getting them.

The second article, “Study says students short on initiative,” reports good news and bad news about education in Maine. The good news is that our state ranks high on a count of how many young people complete high school. The bad news is that a disappointingly low number go on to further study. The articles headline refers to research carried out by the George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute, one of whose principal goals is to remedy this situation.

The research links the bad news to the fact that many Maine students show a lack of initiative in taking energetic and timely action about their careers. The suggested remedies include more counseling. Of course good counseling can only do good. But experience shows that the proper use of the laptops can serve the purpose of promoting initiative far more powerfully than talk alone.

If you asked me to state the biggest benefit I hope to see from the laptops I would kick and scream about having to choose one of the many benefits – after all what would you say is the chief benefit of knowing how to write? But if you forced me to choose, I would pick fostering initiative. The best use of the computers will be to give students more opportunity to choose how and what they will learn. Where learning from a textbook means giving someone else the responsibility for what you learn, the computer makes it possible to give students responsibility, to encourage them to take charge of their own learning and so eventually of their own careers.

Following the textbook is essentially more passive than diving into the Internet or creating a computer model to find out what you need to know. Properly used, the computers could provide the best possible training ground for the development of the active, self-directed, investigative mentality that would, if the Mitchell Institute study is correct, close Maine’s college gap.

The more popular choice of best benefit would also contribute to this result. I have personally known dozens of young people – and read about thousands – who were powerfully turned on (as they would say) to a career of which they might never have heard without the Internet. Research shows what is in any case quite obvious: most young people have only the faintest idea of what it means to be a scientist or an engineer or a creative entrepreneur or journalist. Giving young people the opportunity to sense the excitement that can come with such careers energizes all aspects of what they have to do to enter them.

There is no doubt that the laptops will improve performance on narrow measures of education such as test scores. But the far greater benefits that come from a different and more empowered approach to life are immeasurably more important for the quality of life and economy in Maine. I am looking forward to hearing how Messrs. Duprey and Cressey intend giving this to our youth.

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.