LOGO-L> Re: What really is Logo?

[bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)]

"Bill Kerr" <kerrb@senet.com.au> writes:
>The meaning I interpreted to your original post was that there was a sort of
>seamless web to Seymour's writings, an internally consistent global vision,
>and that his 3 books were just part of a plan to deliver that message to
>different audiences (academics, teachers, parents). To me its an open
>question as to whether Seymour intended his first book to a broader audience
>but didn't get the style quite right or whether he intended it mainly for
>academics. In view of his own self critique (which I see as a good thing) I
>suspect the former interpretation.

I think this misses the point.  (At least, it misses *my* point!  :-)

It wouldn't bother me at all if Seymour used different language, different
metaphors, etc., to make the same point to different audiences.  I wouldn't
particularly care whether he succeeded or failed in such attempts.

My problem is that he has *contradictory ideas* in the different books,
and furthermore, they get worse and worse from one book to the next.

In the early days of Logo, the NSF would fund interesting crazy ideas, and
so Seymour was willing to talk about the basic awfulness of schools as an
institution.  Then things got tight, and the NSF wanted to fund things
that would help teachers in classrooms in the near future, and so Seymour
started talking in those terms.  And finally, he learned that Nintendo
and Lego have more money than the NSF, so he started talking about how
corporations are going to save the world.

Pfui.

>It just doesn't feel right to me to read a watered down version of MS and
>TCM but more importantly I think parts of it are just plain wrong. ie. the
>"optimistic" view that rich corporations, the learning revolution and kids
>power are all headed in the same direction. Cybernetics can be used to build
>a better weapons system or it can be used to help the disabled. Rich
>corporations will intervene in education to improve students skill levels in
>technology but they won't intervene to see that those skills are used to
>help the poor rather than the rich. I'm looking for something more
>meaningful than a MacDonalds Charter of how to keep customers happy. At this
>point we require more than just the logo philosophy, or at least the version
>propagated by Seymour.

I agree with this part.  In TCM, Seymour actually comes out IN FAVOR OF
BOMBS!!!  If the bombs are high-tech, that is -- never mind that their
purpose is to kill people.  This is contemptible, and it has nothing to
do with choosing appropriate language for a given audience.

Seymour is a brilliant guy who's made a lot of contributions to education.
But I don't think the deification of Seymour helps the cause, and one
reason I don't like talking about "the Logo philosophy" instead of
talking about "progressive education" is that the former encourages
people to read Seymour's books and stop there, instead of reading
Dewey and Paul Goodman and John Holt and so on.
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