The news that the legislators will come back for a special session early in the fall is a call to action for those few of us who believe that the laptop issue requires serious public discussion. I am incited to say “few” because I have read very little debate that goes much deeper than “They are wonderful” on one side and “Waste of money” on the other.

My challenge last week to opponents (and particularly Reps. Cressey and Duprey) to set out their arguments more fully so that we can discuss them produced only three responses. I thank Sen. Tom Sawyer and Michael Walker for insightful and supportive letters and especially Roy Martin of Glenburn, for bravely venturing to formulate doubts, most of which, I am sure, are shared by many people. The special legislative session is bound to bring new attempts to scuttle the initiative. I hope that people on both sides would prefer this to be debated against a background of better public understanding of the issues.

Some of my friends will think I have become a traitor to the cause if I say that on the whole I find myself agreeing with skeptics. No, I have not switched sides. I am 100 percent for the laptops. But I have to say that if all I knew about the reasons for having them was what I got from “official” statements I would not be convinced. I am not blaming the DOE for this. It is in the nature of official statements that they have to please too many people and so lose depth and bite as well as the passion that was often so wonderfully present in the Governor’s presentations. We the people of the state have to take on the task of defining and enriching this great opportunity.

With Martin’s permission I shall explain some of what I mean by looking at his reasons for rejecting three arguments for the laptops which he formulates as:

1. The student has access to the vast knowledge … on the Internet.

2. The student becomes more computer literate.

3. The student takes more interest in learning.

Today I’ll discuss only the second of these and come back to the others next week. Mr. Martin replies that “becoming computer literate is fast losing its value as computers become more responsive to hand movements, voice, and even facial expressions.” Indeed, if being “computer literate” (or “computer savvy” to use the language on the DOE site) means knowing how to use today’s computer systems, Mr. Martin is absolutely right in suggesting that this is unlikely to be relevant knowledge when these kids get out into the workplace. In any case, that kind of knowledge can be obtained by lesser means than giving every student a personal laptop. But the kind of “computer literacy” I believe to be important is a very different and more serious matter of which there is no hint in the official statements about the laptop initiative.

The fact that computers are able to recognize voice and facial expressions is not a reason for knowing less about them. It is a reason for knowing more about how they do this. I hear people say: “I don’t need to know how a car works in order to drive so I don’t need to know how a computer works.” This is a deeply anti-educational and anti-intellectual attitude. The fact is that most people do know, at least in a very general way, “how a car works.” But for most of them how a computer can recognize a facial expression is pure magic.

Even if as a teacher or a parent I didn’t have time to understand this myself, I would hope that our schools would encourage in children an attitude of curiosity and inquiry about the important things in their lives – as computers are. And all the more so because the ideas on which computers are based figure among the key ideas that are shaping twenty first century science.

But if this is kind of knowledge is so important why is it not part of the official vision of the laptop initiative? Good question! To answer it we might have to note that the knowledge is absent not only from the official laptop vision but from the even more official Learning Results. For me one of the many real arguments in favor of laptops is that they will eventually force a modernization of the official line about what knowledge Maine’s kids ought to be getting.

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.