a response to Alan Kay

In my last post, I was talking about whether a project is "more" constructionist than another. Part of it was tongue in cheek, part of it was to raise the question of who decides? What does it mean? Is "constructionism" a word with meaning, does it have too much history to mean anything, or do people use it to justify absolutely anything? And does that matter? You can be a constructionist without knowing it. You can call a project constructivist even if it isn't. Does the name mean anything?

This post responds to a message sent by Alan Kay to the Squeakland mailing list on February 24, 2004 in response to two people's comments about Squeak and using it in the classroom. Suffice to say, parts of it really bothered me.

First, he recommended a book with the following statement:

"It contains ideas and directions for about a dozen projects that children like to do, are "good" for them epistemologically, and have been thoroughly tested."

Let's take that apart. The book has ideas and directions for about a dozen projects that children like to do and the projects have been thoroughly tested. That sounds okay. Since Alan often references Seymour and goes for constructionist ideas, I'm assuming the book contains a list of project ideas like "make an ecology" and isn't a recipe book for projects and how each project must be implemented (which of course would be an instruction set and not constructive).

The part that troubles me is the middle section. What does it mean for projects to be good for someone epistemologically? Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowing, or a theory of the nature of knowledge. I don't understand what his phrase even means. This bothers me. He is an expert mathematician and computer scientist who is discussing "real math" and "school math," describing the differences, and evaluating projects from that perspective. That's fine. But then he picks up this language, justifying the projects by saying they're good for the kids, like a Squeak Etoys project will build character, but no-- it's good for them epistemologically, which sounds much better than character! Actually, this sounds like meaningless jargon to me, and it makes me nervous that he's using it.

Another excerpt:

"Squeak etoys are in the form of a scriptable multimedia environment, so what gets authored can range from presentations (such as in powerpoint), stories and games (such as in MS Word, Director and Flash), to mathematical and scientific simulations. Each of these can have a little (to a lot) of overlap with various kinds of educational goals (including good ones). This is rather like introducing a word processor into a classroom "plus plus". That is, the authoring system needs to be really open-ended to deal with all of its genre (a word processor in which one could only write stories but not essays about important ideas would be a terrible use of technology).... Children don't know much about writing or math or science, but they do know a lot of stories and games, and a bit about stories and games, so they tend to plunge fearlessly into using a dynamic medium like Squeak etoys to make representations of stories and games of many different kinds. This simply follows previous observations of children with LogoWriter and Hypercard. There is nothing wrong with this, it's an easy way for them to learn the mechanics of using the system, and they can occasionally learn something beyond stories and games (e.g. a little about math) in the process."

I agree that any open and flexible technology can be used trivially or in ways that were not intended. What bothers me from this excerpt is the attitude towards "stories and games" as though they're trivial to create and don't constitute real forms of projects (such as things that include real math) and the hierarchy he creates of projects and technologies with presentations/PowerPoint at the bottom, math & science at the top and stories & games somewhere in the middle. It reminds me of Piaget's scale of concrete to abstract thinking. Didn't Gilligan already debunk that and show there is no hierarchy?

Real math vs. school math is an important point. We want children to understand math principles and not plug numbers into equations mechanically, with no understanding of the whys or hows of it. But why should stories and games justify themselves through math and science? Is there no other real learning? Say that Squeak is a tool for math and science, as Logo is a tool for geometry. Say Squeak is not a tool for expression. Do not trivialize important and meaningful domains because they are not your own.

That said, designing a sophisticated, interesting game requires advanced mathematical and programming skills, both of which Alan seems to value. Many children have played video games and aren't satisfied with designing simplistic games. They push into hard problems in order to program their own, compelling games, including in the Squeak environment. So programming games should fall into the "nontrivial" category, even by the standards presented in this email.

In the excerpt, Alan seems to value the construction of an essay over a story, even though neither is mathematical. In some ways, I understand. An essay is the logical presentation of an argument. It's analytic. But in many ways, a strong essay is simply a well-constructed story. Both show a fluency in writing and expression of ideas; they are completely related.

Telling a story in Squeak is probably quite silly because it is a programming environment. Text fields don't push the capabilities of the tool, and the tool doesn't support much text-editing or typography. When students want to create Squeak stories or games, facilitators may want to push on interactive fiction since the kids are interested in games and stories anyway and the teachers want them to learn "something real."

But this statement is problematic:

"A good project in Squeak etoys is one that first "appeals as art" and then has some serious nontrivial content that has to be worked out to get the whole above threshold. The "serious nontrivial content" could be mathematical, scientific, theatrical, musical, visual, etc., or some mixture."

It completely trivializes art, and tells kids that in order to do something with serious nontrivial content, they have to be tricked into it with the nice facade of "art." It's demeaning to both art and the "nontrivial content." Maybe what needs to follow is a discussion of how "school art" is not "real art" and "real artists" work in deep and meaningful ways that aren't represented in a school's curriculum. Would that help? Because personally, I don't see how expression can possibly be viewed in such a trivial manner.