Fellow
To be quite honest, I really had a hard time getting into the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. Maybe it was my mood, maybe my brain was just full from all of my other projects but it was initially a tough read. I felt a bit oppressed myself as I slogged through chapter 1... but then, I got to chapter 2 and Friere's earlier thoughts started to come into focus.
Fellow
Seymour Papert was definitely ahead of his time when he wrote mindstorms in the 80s. Unfortunately he still seems to be ahead of his time some 30 years later. Instead of hands-on and minds-on education, the current trends in education have pushed us towards accountability, standards and a common framework for education.
Fellow
Reading Mindstorms should be inspirational. I love reading anything that Seymour Papert has written. His words and his vision have always rung true for me and have always motivated and inspired me to infuse the practice he calls "Constructionism" into my classroom. Then what it is about this time through the book that I have been left with such a grey and pessimistic feeling about everything that is the state of public education 35 years after Papert wrote Mindstorms?
