Stephen Downes

Sometimes I hear people say that contemporary edubloggers are not sufficiently aware of the history of pedagogy. Perhaps - but at the same time, today's edubloggers are saying the same thing generations of writers have been saying. Seymour Papert, for example: "The institution of School, with its daily lesson plans, fixed curriculum, standardized tests, and other such paraphernalia tends constantly to reduce learning to a series of technical acts and the teacher to the role of a technician." Of course it doesn't work. As Fryer notes, "School is a complex, adaptive system." People like Papert understand this.