Rethinking CS Education

and with that it is my honor to  introduce you Ellen can work you know

okay

this is just a little preliminary  warning here

because

the the internet  has done in supported

criticism  it's

like Gresham's law bad money drives  out

the good and there's so much  unsupported

criticism that good

  criticism criticism that supported is

  often claimed to be a rant

but this is  not a rant

however it will be critical

so my first exhibit

here is a kind

of  American dream so it

is the trappings of  riding

the bicycle as it's

very fancy  it has training wheels

the buyer of

this  device would be a parent probably

and  most important

thing about it is it's  like frets

on a violin it happens the  training

wheels actually don't help you  to learn to

ride a bike in fact they  help you towards the opposite

the number  one skill you have to learn when

you're  riding a bike is to balance and turn  into

the turns and the training wheels  prevent you from doing

that and so the

this

is not a joke just when I was

looking for slides for this on the  internet I found amazingly

that there  are a number of adult societies

that  have bikes with

training wheels like  this this is not a joke these people

do  Turing they race everything

else because  this is what they learned now of course  many

children get off the training  wheels at

some point  but significant

numbers of adults don't

now the way you to write

a bike and this  is relatively

recent compared to the  training wheel phenomenon is

you what  you want is to get the kids low bikes  they

don't even have any pedals because  that's not the

germane part if you want  low bytes so they

don't fall over and  they can it's kind of like a scooter and  what

you do is you learn to glide and to  turn

into the thing that's how you learn  to ride a bike

so these two exhibits

are  very germane I think

to what we're  talking about today so

I think of this  side as marketing

marketing is basically  dealing with

what people want and that  is

a large number like we want sugar we

  want fat we want fantasy football

we  have many many

wants and if you're  interested in it you

might look at a  book called human universals by

grant Brown who's an anthropologist  who's identified

about 300 things

  genetic things that

we are born wanting  and

many of the consumer

society  successes today are

technological  amplifiers for those things

now the

other group of people that are  interested in who people are

about we should be interested in who the  user is going

to be our educators

they  also study this is what we're supposed  to

be doing here I want to try and  differentiate

between the two and  education

educators are interested in  what people need

so this is requires  taking a moral stance

and it's tricky  because

of course we are all flawed  beings

also and people who take moral  stance

who are floral flawed beings  often wind

up with something that  resembles a religion or a cult

but still  what the educators

doing is essentially chain  rather

than catering and

in many cases  people don't

want what they need in

fact  there's a whole field called behavioral

  economics came

after Anthropology got  politicized

we fortunately have this  branch of cognitive

psychology called  behavioral economics that has

been  looking at what people do not what

they  say people as they are rather than

as  they're supposed to be and so the

  interesting question it would be really  nice

if we can get people to want what  they need and there

are some actual ways  of doing that

and I'll mention mention a  couple

so this

is mice I could not find  a picture of this

proper British lady I  had supper

with 30 years now in London

but Mary Poppins she was the Mary  Poppins type

and we had a great  conversation and drifted

into education  and at some point

she said oh you  Americans

have the best high school  education in the world and I

said what  and she said

what a pity you have to go  to college to get it

now graduate school

so there

are these  tests of reading the National

Assessment  of Educational Progress they

have a  dismal standard

for what they call  proficient reading it's not

what we  would call proficient but it's the main  one that

has looked at that's mainly for  K through 12 but

what school if you dig  around on

their website you can find  that they've also looked

at using the  same criteria at

graduates graduates of  four-year colleges

and universities and

in 1992

42 percent of

college graduates

  were proficient or better

so less than  half

in 2003 11 years later

when they  did it was down to 31 percent

so  colleges are not even guarding

the  literacy so

what this says to me that on  this average I mean this is

one number  for 4,000 institutions

but what it says  is that lump

together colleges are  essentially selling

degrees we kind of  know that but that's what

because the college is not actually  guarding

what it means to be educated  that

in some very important census they  are

giving people degrees who cannot  possibly be educated

so

another little  preliminary idea

here is because we're  we

tend to use indo-european languages

  including the ones came

out of India  those languages

are very noun oriented

now and

there's mostly about things the  things don't

interpenetrate and

so if we  think of ideas as matter

they oppose  each other but we also could

ideas as being made  of radiation we

got superposition now we  can shine as many lights in

the same  spot as we want and we don't have to  resolve

them we can look at the mixtures  of

them and we can consider them  separately we don't

have to make a  decision they're all occupying the

space and I'm offering this up as a  metaphor because

even

before Design  Thinking was a phrase the

number one  thing about design is being able to hold

mutually incompatible things in your  head for a very

very long time before  you make

any commitments we

tend to  commit early much too early

so things  are processes nouns or

verbs here's the  t-shirt for today

this is silicon valley  so

this would have been you know we  always make t-shirts so my

design  t-shirt would show the superposition of

  ideas as radiation

and can't

do a talk  without a Winston Churchill story

there  are so many good ones and

I'll avoid my  tendency to digress to

tell you five of  them but

the one that's good at this one  he was at a party there

he is smoking  his cigar and the

hostess who is a  duchess came over to

him and said mr.  Churchill I'm so distressed

I just saw  Earl so-and-so

over there steal one of  my silver salt

shakers and

Churchill  thought for a while and he went over

the Earl and on the way picked up  another salt shaker and put it in

his  pocket and when he got over to the Earl  he took

it out and he said I think we've  been noticed perhaps

we should put these  back

  so this is how you if you

want to get  something done the way you do it is not

so much trying to convince somebody but  to create

a tribe that is a conspiracy  because

anthropologically that is what

  we are more than any other thing we are  tribal

beings and we tend to  automatically oppose

things outside of  our tribe even

if they're good ideas  because that isn't the way we think  in

fact we don't think we're not  primarily

thinking animals

so this

thing  about coding is

often mentioned

side by  side with jobs competitiveness

diversity  it's

got a million things going on with

  it but I thought I'd put

up three other  things that I think need

to be thought  about first and one of

them is our I  think

our primary duty as adults is not

  to go out and get a job but to

think  about the next generation

that's part of  the larger picture of thing a

job is  just about us and now

children are the  next

generation and Marshall McLuhan  said

children are the messages

we send  to the future but my

retort to McLuhan  was no

they they are the future we're  sending to the future

they're not a  message they are the future and

we've

  got another duty in a

society that has  created so much wealth by

a certain  complicated difficult kind

of  cooperation the reason

we're all here is  not because we're competitive reason

  we're here is because we live in a  larger

structure in which competition  the

hunting and gathering parts of us  that

go back a couple hundred thousand  years are subsumed

  a larger set of cooperation that

creates  all of the wealth hunting and gatherers

  need fertile valleys created

by somebody  else nature they

strip it dry that's the  impulse and move on sounds

a little bit  like business doesn't

even sound the  agricultural but

in order to scale our  natural

tendencies to exploit we have

something very very different and  we

are the beneficiaries of that

so for  thinking about education my

don't

even bother with this for a while  let's

worry about what's really going on  and then

there's this idea which is  almost

never talked about in

our  pragmatic society like ours

which is I  just been calling

richness it can happen

  in the context of work it

with children can happen with citizen  chip

but it's basically something that  is the

man does not live by bread alone  idea

and I

believe that this is

a  rallying point to try and understand

what the rest of education is about  particularly

as it relates

to how we  should think about children

in the next  generation

ok so that was one I'm  basically

doing five points here

before

  I look at a look

at them a little more  deeply I usually don't do that I don't  like top-down

stuff but I figured for

  this talk it would be good so the first  thing had to

do with you know what what  are some

of the contexts that we care  about second context

is humans 101

so  one part of it is

of course we're very  complex but

our minds  are

very theatrical the

way we respond  to theater

is also the way we respond

what we like to call reality which in  itself is a kind of

theater and there  are a few people here who

are there are  some neuro people here right I saw

  anybody yes

so tell them all about it  this afternoon

so these are  understanding

more about what's going on

  here is really important so the the  theatrical

thing another one is our

  minds are tiny here's George Miller one

of the inventors of cognitive psychology  and fact

7 plus or minus 2 has been  downgraded

7

plus or minus 2 was dealing  with number sequences

and stuff and this

has been looked at and a lot and the  truth is is that we're terrible

at  multitasking and in fact it is

very  difficult for us to sensibly deal with

  multiple things even if they have been

  chunked hugely so

we can think of this  as like if you take these two

ideas  together this is also user interface

  design 101 we

have theatrical reactions  to things we

need to create theater when  we're creating a user interface

design  and we're completely limited and

so  playing those off against each other is  tremendously

important we'll look at  this a little bit more and then

a more  controversial idea is that we are mostly  not

human this is

something that is  outside of the myth that human

beings  like to believe in but in fact we

a lot  of us is primate and a

whole lot of us  is mammalian and

how that plays out  against

some of the more recent  additions

to our mental apparatus  particularly our culture are

interesting  so these three things are things that  are worthwhile

holding in mind by the  way these are things that computer

  people just hate to think about most  computer

people went into computing  because they were disturb

  by other human beings

and

one of the  reasons that coding

programming has  stayed so much

the way it is terrible  set of ideas that

were almost necessary  in the 40s

and 50s are still around  today as

the primary ways of doing  programming

because they are the most  mechanical ways

that in the small they  are the most understandable

reliable the problem is in the large  they don't scale

at all in the large  they are the least

reliable way of doing  anything and it's only

by looking at  tiny little places that people have any

  comfort at all and so they stay with  where they're

comfortable this is so

the  theatrical part of this is lots bigger

  than we think the limitations are much

  less or smaller than we think and the

  relationship we have with our

heritage  is much we

are much more different than  we think we are

okay now the third idea  here would

go back to the first Turing  Award winner

this little gnome of a man  was one of the great

men of our time  Alper Lowe's and

he more or less created  computer

science and I thought since the

  CS term is bandied about a lot it might  be interesting

to see what the guy who  invented the term actually meant by

it  so he said this in

the early 60s and  somebody said

what does that mean and he  said computer science

is the science of  processes I remember

science  he didn't mean science as in library  science

he didn't mean sciences and  social science he

actually meant science  he didn't mean it as a metaphor

he meant  we need to have a science of things

in  process and there are a gazillion of

  them that is what he meant he didn't

have an engineering definition that's  something

else he said we need to  understand

things in process and he

meant all processes meant mechanical  processes

  technological processes there's the

  Constitution social processes

the guys  who did the Constitution

were social

  geniuses they actually put

together a  system better than any computer system  we've

ever done because it has millions

  and millions of not terribly cooperating  parts

and it is basically thrived with

  some hiccups along the way for hundreds  of

years think about that and the cops

  Constitution I have a version of it with

me is just a tiny little book it's a  meta

recipe for a

very complicated multi  processing operating

system far far  beyond anything we've been able to

do  and of

course biology and of course  mental

processes all of these processes  were things

and the other thing that  pearl Ellis said is

besides

looking at  all processes it itself because of

what  it is can serve as a representation a

  kind of a mathematics for all processes  so this

is a big idea this is an  exciting idea

it excited me it's

like  one of the greatest things I hate to see  computing

and computer science water  down to some

terrible kind of  engineering that the Babylonians

might  have failed at with

tiny conceptions of  programming a computer

like munging  variables with an

assignment statement  that is pathetic and

I'm saying it in  this strong way because

you need to  realize that we're in the middle of

a  complete form

of bullshit that has grown  up out of

the pop culture colliding with

  this power this power and wealth

in  order to serve education which

i think  is much more still should be about

people need rather than what they want  education can't

cave in to what the pop  culture

does it has to think about  itself

as being about the  culture that developed

culture shouldn't  get rid of the pop culture cop

pop  culture has incredible energy

any  developed culture needs that energy

but  it cannot give in to that energy there

  has to be a reasonable tension there

so  that was number three number four is

boy  if you look at other fields like

  mechanical CAD or electrical cat or  biocad

now they have all these great

  toys they happen to be all

implemented  on computers computer-aided design

  simulators and now

fab you

think it up  save mechanically whatever

it is design  it

simulate it now we can build it build

  a flute so the idea here is

in every  place except computing is

this notion of  people moving

towards wanting to design  and wanting to ship

the design it's

in  computing that we are so far behind

  we're still more

than 80 percent of the  undergraduates at

UCLA a top 10 computer  science

department use by terminal  emulators

which itself was emulating  decks

of punched cards doing

the same  kind of compilation

loading and linking  in

say C++ that's

their main language  there as was done

50 years ago this does  not

scale and yet this is what computer  people are doing they

don't have  anything like what more sensible

in these other fields are using  computers for so

if you take these two  things together take perlis

and this

  notion is a programming

system yeah part  of it is the functionality part

that's  what you see in most

systems for let's  everybody code

it's got a

  most of them got numbers

maybe they got  a raise they got assignment

statements  all the usual suspects

there that's not  even close

that is not what the put in  front of people

what you need is

an  environment an environment is it's about  systems

it's a bit about design it's  about media programming

language is a  user interface as

much as it is any  other thing why have

multiple ones  they're altering equivalent

so what's  the difference well at one end it's

some  of them run faster than others another

  part you might have to write

less code but another part is they  should be something

that you think in  terms of and they're the

idea of a user  interface and giving you

ways of  thinking about things starts dominating

  okay last of the five ideas to

get  started here is this notion of

  thresholds this is critical

and I think  this is an interesting

thing that in  science and engineering

this is  something that is understood

in a way  but it's rarely

talked about and in most

educational situations it's not  understood

and thus rarely talked about  and

it's this idea

time

progress wiggly  line

see

them in the paper all the time  could be reading

scores yay

ooh yay  boo

yeah meaningless

absolutely and  completely meaningless same with the

stock market no matter what happens in  the stock market there's

some  rationalization for it even if it's just  looking

at random noise

think about what  thinking is thinking

is not being  logical

thinking is choosing

environment that you're going to think  in before

you start rationalizing  so

let's put a threshold in

so my  threshold name is what is

actually  needed and here we

can see that this guy  and this

guy are irrelevant this guy is  really

relevant we got past the  threshold now we're

something before we were just  bullshitting around

yay we don't care

  the fluctuations here are things

we're really interested in because we're  guiding

this growth process now

for most  things in

human society we've got this

  the threshold is up here and

now none of  this actually means any this is

like  reading take reading

doesn't matter  where it's going up or down because

it's  all below threshold the children aren't  really

learning to read fluently enough  in so you're always getting a  qualitative

gap you're basically in this  zone

I call the pink zone doesn't

matter  most

people don't care about it and

the  idea of thresholds are actually fought

  because a threshold will reveal

  something is actually

wrong now

reforms  or impulses

often happen down here  here's

one

huge amount of effort

fizzle  yay wonk

completely irrelevant

and can  be in any area it

could be an education  you see it all time how about the  moonshot

hey we made it to the moon so

what we set back space travel more than  50 years

why because the

physics the  chemistry and the mathematics

of space  travel are that it just

with chemical rocketry  it's

about MV equals MV you're  exchanging momentum

chemical processes  cannot

get the velocity

  of the particles you're letting out to

  be high enough to actually give

you  that's why the Saturn rocket is 45

stories literally have you ever seen one  up close  Kate

calves Romy Canaveral Museum in  Florida don't

miss it they have one  sideways so

this is a forty five story  building hung sideways

that is one and a  half football feels

and it is all high  explosive

except for the little end part  where there are three people

if you want  a visual

explanation of the physics of

  chemical rocketry no you cannot

do space  travel that way and

this whole thing was

  a huge effort but it was aimed at the  wrong place

so you actually set up a  bunch of

technologies that now had to be  exploited further and you still

get anywhere and you still don't get  anywhere and now everybody's

lost their  taste for it

the web I'm not going

to my  diatribe about the web but web browsers

everybody uses it every day it's like  one of the worst ideas

ever ever

it only  does a few things compared

to what it  should be doing and this is hard

explain the people you heart it's hard  to find people who actually

are willing  to criticize the whip but

you know why  so well gee you can't it

was done on a  machine that already had WYSIWYG editing

  after 20 years why doesn't it still have  wood why

doesn't have WYSIWYG editing  well they're getting to it

no he took a  couple of years to do

WYSIWYG editing in  the first place so

what we've got there  is the ultimate Esau's

cup of soup if  you know that story from the Bible Esau

  came home from a hunt he was the big  hairy

he-man brother the little brother  jacob

was cooking some soup and he saw  said

brother i'm hungry  can i have some soup and

jacob said yes  for your birthright and

he saw i said  okay

that's humans 101 that

is what  behavioral economics is all about

  we are willing to sell a lot

for  momentary convenience so

here are two  words better and perfect do

we need to  really pay heat this is

the more  dangerous one better and perfect are

the  two enemies of what is actually needed  right

perfect as

I was talking to Mike  earlier

I hope to get to this slide  because he did something that

is really  cool I'm gonna show you the the

abstraction of it and I hope we get to  what it actually is

no better

disaster  this is where incremental

progress comes  from we need qualitative

progress so

you  need to get there

it's the lowest thing  that is

above the threshold this is the

secret you know this is something they  don't teach you in design

school but  it's something it's really important to

understand if you wanted if you want to  invent something

that is gonna generate  say 30 trillion bucks

like twenty four  of us

at Xerox PARC this is how you do

  it you have to find this thing and

I  call this

the McCready sweet spot Paul

MacCready was the guy who did  man-powered flight after 50

years of  really good people failing at it he did

it in six months from the time he  decided to

do it I will not use the time  to tell that

story but maybe in the  question and answer because it's a great  story

but this guy more

than any other  person I ever knew and he

wouldn't budge  until he found this so

you can think of  this as the

primary part of making  progress is

problem finding problem fine  forget

about problem solving you're  probably in the wrong context

you're  already in a place

where your sense of  problems is probably completely wrong

so like the premise of this whole  meeting is probably completely wrong

  start there probably completely

but it's  good because you got the people here but

just start off with the idea it's  probably come  me wrong

what is actually needed and  what is

that and

here's something the  thunders hate

like if this is Xerox PARC

  this was the

ARPA community for 10 years

  Xerox PARC has held up as some

  miraculous Oasis and that that wasn't

  true at all we were just an outgrowth of  this

much larger community that in fact

hought up most of the ideas the  philosophies and

we were just recent

  PhDs I was the oldest person there I was

  30 Butler Lampson was 27 the

guy who was  set it up Bob Taylor was 38

there was  all this money

that went into inventing  computer

graphics and artificial  intelligence and the programming

  language Lisp and just every

kind of  thing there and

when we went to park  what we looked at is what is this

for  this ARPA

dream

and once you get there

  you get a whole region now you can

operate it because it's not just getting  to a point

you're actually getting to a  place with

a different set of ideas and  all of

a sudden you're definitely above  what is

actually needed and for a while  you

can actually make real progress not

  fake progress

and basically you think of  as taking our normal

pink brains and  adding a point

of view an  epistemological stance a way

of looking  at things that was different that makes

  our week mental

operations much much  more powerful I mean my slogan

for that  is point of view is worth 80 IQ points

  it's the number one thing that you want  to do

because we're terrible at thinking  and weak context

okay

don't forget that  when you're thinking about things this  afternoon

  and we probably don't have any

funders  in the room but I like to point out

hem that no invention has been more  practical than

science I also

the business business is always saying  well we're in business to

make money I  said no you aren't really you're only  trying

to make millions and billions

cience has created trillions

trillions  and trillions of dollars off

almost no  investment

get your head on straight  invest

the right way ok

so let's quickly  take

a look at a couple of these clothes  here we take

a look at these any  questions so far on this

claim this is  not a rant because

I'm happy to justify  anything that I've said

but I'm because  this is an oral talk I'm

short  circuiting and just making it as claims

  but I'm sure you'll trust what

I'm  saying here so take

these four areas  let's take a look

at jobs

coding for  jobs so I got

my friend Vishal here and  I happened

to know him very well I think  we've

known each other for years right  so

so I'm gonna put I'm gonna

put  something into his mouth and let's see  what

he says Vishal my

my screen Vishal  says I don't want my

folks cold the code  the old bad ways I want them

to know how  to design and think is that reasonable

  100 percent right CEO of

a company that  has a hundred and eighty thousand people  and

it depends on programming

the  problem is teaching people

to code in  the way most of this is being done it's  not

going to get you there it's just  dicking around underneath

the threshold  so for

even going to worry about jobs  for three nanoseconds

we need something  qualitatively different let's

take a  look at next generation

there's so many  things we could say here but one is

we  have decided

in our society we're going  to teach reading and writing to every  child regardless

of whether they want to  or not right

it is not their choice so  this

violates Einstein who said love

is  a better teacher than duty I

happen to  agree with this idea

because I think  it's the duty of

this society to do  something about

instilling the strongest  parts of

the culture in the next  generation and so we're just taking

that  even though in many ways it's going

to  be problematic Thoreau has said without  books

history is silent literature dumb  science

crippled thought and speculation  at a standstill

so

we're just doing it

high school

is way too late I don't even  know why you're bothering with it here

  period

this does I

mean it's okay if you  got spare time

but if you're gonna take  a subject

seriously like reading and  writing

like thinking

and whatever the

part that computing might have to play  and thinking

in the future and I think  it's a big part I'm

going to take it  serious forget about high school

we're  talking about something that

has to be  begin early

and this

has been a tough  sell because the way America

looks at it  we have jobs problems and if we

them you know we can get  no

that's disaster that's like  quarter-to-quarter

thinking done on a  national scale it

is just bad so

we have  to think earlier now if

you have good  thoughts for children

an interesting  thing is that those are not

pet for  tossing

into high school as long as you  don't take them too seriously  like

the user-interface that everybody  uses it today

the GUI that was my  invention and I originally

for children and I designed it that way  because

we had far more important things  that we wanted them to learn that

interface is not a good user interface  for adults

but in fact it's the

one that  adults wound up using because we

made it  easier for children to learn same thing

the iPad the iPad is good for two year  olds and ninety two

in between  it's

a terrible user interface and  hardly anybody knows it

  think about it and Apple finally  realized

oh maybe we should put

ools in there like maybe a pencil maybe  a keyboard

reminds me of a idea

from the  60s they'll

get there eventually okay

so  the relationship

here with what vishal  wants

we have to take a bit of a long  view it's not I

mean K through 12 is 13  years how long

is how long does it take  to even get going how long does it take

  to deploy that's what

we have to be  thinking about

five years from now  today's

kindergartners will be in fifth  grade and we know a lot about

what to do  with fifth graders and we know a bit

  about what to do with younger children  the

logistics are enormous for

doing any  kind of deployment we'll

talk about that  on a bit

biggest barrier for children

  all the adults around them

this

this happens to be a

it's a  parliament in a country

we regard as  eminently civilized

this on this  particular day

they lost it and it  wasn't the only time

but that's not  that's

just the symptom the

problem is  because

adults are trying to  recapitulate the children

into  themselves if they aren't

at the  tippy-top of the of

the century that  they're living in they're recapitulating

  children into the past this is

the Montessori pointed out in her first  book she said

the biggest problem  she

said children are driven by nature  to

learn the environment around them  they don't know where they're being born

into by the way she was the one of the  top three people

in anthropology in in

  Italy

at this

urged today digress and  this is a good story  so

Montessori undergraduate degree was  in

engineering that's

what she wanted to  get a PhD in they wouldn't let her

this  is 19th century Italy and

so she put up  a fuss and finally

the University of  Rome said they'd admit her for a medical

degree if she could pass this test they  were sure she couldn't

pass but think  about Maria Montessori she was just much

  much smarter than any of us in this room  she

was a first-class intellect she aced

this test and became the first woman  physician

in Italy and

not having had a  calling for it she decided

medicine and it was through the slum  medicine that she

saw the children she  started picking up ideas for them

eanwhile she was studying anthropology  and the

number one principle she had is  children

don't know what society they're  being born

into and yet they learn it  therefore

we need to set up the society  we

want them to acclimate to and

if we  can't do it in home then we should you

make  Google embody the idea it's not a  question of

telling the children about  the century

question of putting them in this entry  instead

of living land this is an idea  that Seymour Papert use

very strong in  his metaphor for math land

want to go  learn French go to France want

to go  learn math go to a math land except

we  don't have a math land make what

so

is a big idea and I think this is the  number one thing

that should be thought  about if we're doing design this  afternoon

is this idea of hey what

children were brought up in the future  there are some interesting

efforts

there  was an extended Montessori

effort done  by the

British between the two world

wars called the British infant school  system anybody here

ever hear of that  yeah so

this is so basically the  reasoning there was we created

the  stewards of the British Empire

in the  boarding schools Eton

and Harrow we took  the children away from this plate

of  Plato's Republic 101 right take the  children

away from their parents train  them make them

into the kind of Brits

  the official Brit that's the job of

Eton  and Harrow we'll create all

these  administrators and the Reformers

in the  20s said yeah that's a really good

idea  we can't build

such schools for the  working class

but what we can do is take  the children away from their parents for

all of their waking hours this is the  British infant school

system they fed  them children were in these schools

for  about 12 hours a day and what

they did  was to extend Montessori ideas in

very powerful ways so if you're  interested in this

way of see

everybody  gets that

this is one of the ways you  get people to want what they need

right  because

we don't think about whether we  want to learn our culture

  we just learn

it nobody

tells we're in  this thing it's

seamless

Steve

Jobs this  is

his big brother photograph from 1984

everybody should learn how to code it  teaches you how to think

well teaching  you how to think badly

this is I mean

  Steve didn't even code so

yeah no idea

what he was taught this is just complete  bullshit

and

just empirically if you  look at

where maybe

anecdotally but it'd be great to do you  know just look

at the last 300

computer  people you looked at and

maybe  encountered on the internet or

and there's no evidence that they can  think at all

they can do a few little  things but in fact

they don't even know  what thinking is because thinking

is not  actually

logic that

was the mistake that  the Greeks made and that was the mistake

  that st. Thomas Aquinas made was the  major

mistake of Middle Ages it was also  the major mistake

of post-modernism that  isn't what it is

so

programming but it's for different  bigger more

important reasons

but don't  don't be led astray just because

guy was successful in the pop culture I  knew

him very well Steve and I were  friends to the extent that he

could have  a friend I was the guy

who set up the  Pixar deal for him besides having

a fair  amount to do with the Mac

very well  he's

one of the great salesmen of all  times

okay so

  citizenship so

the simple one here I  think is just

Jefferson's

basically the  path the ultimate powers reside

people if we think them not alight did  not let's not take it away

from them but  you better inform their discretion  through

education period that is why  public education is set

up in this  country I'm not going to be labor at  this point

but you could hardly find  that this is the fact when

you go to any  school they

teach dates here and there  but I've

never found a public school  that actually teaches the children

how  the country works what was the

whole  point of setting it up that particular  way

and why has it worked as well as it  has

so the question here

is we have to  ask what is enlightened enough mean for  this

century what does that mean

now I'm  just pointing this out because if we  don't

take care of things like this it's  moot

whether children learn how to  program regardless of

whether it's we  have perfect participation by every

ethnic group and every gender and every  it's

this moot we have to take

care of  the larger ideas and education

  okay so richness so

this

is a diagram I  like that we

have the systems of the  natural world we have the social systems  we

have technological systems and we  have ourselves as many

systems and  richness

for most people comes out of  different aspects of

this we could also  turn it around and

going to do an education for the 21st  century it

is precisely this that we  should

look at and by the way there's an  underlying unifying

way of thinking  about things and that

is as terms of  systems these things are abstractly

similar as systems even though they  ramify

in many different ways  that could be a different way

of getting  rid of the stovepiping

that education is  mired in

right now okay so we need to

deal with the ineffable and so this  whole passel

of things  is kind of a minimum

set I could come up  with it would fit into 10 or

15 minutes  as part of this talk that

needs to be  kind of thought about when you're trying  to think

about something you want every  child to learn

and maybe you start with  the children go

to richness come back on  citizenship maybe

you start with  richness go to the children come over

to  citizenship in all cases jobs

winds up  being the last thing because

jobs come  primarily out of

having wealth to do  something

with and wealth here I mean is  the potential

wealth is like having  energy resources

wealth is like  inventing personal computing

and then in  the internet these are the potential for

doing things those are the things that  have to be invented

okay so mr. Spock  here  is

always shocked when anybody

pays any  attention to human beings especially

  technical people so

here's a couple of  ideas simple

metaphor from the 19th  century about human

memory it's like an  erosion gully water

comes down in some  random place if it gets

that channel is a little more efficient  pretty

soon you've got one of these and  then pretty soon you've got the

Grand  Canyon is an erosion gully if

you've  ever been there it's a hell of a one and  in

fact when you're in here

it's hard to  even imagine that you could

get out I  suppose you were born in there

you might  not even know that this is sort

of  pinkish it's the only color there

is so  this is a way of thinking

context that we like to call reality  we're

just in an erosion gully the  reason

we fight everybody else in the  world is they're in a different inner  ocean gully

none of these things are  real they're

all made up of stories and  beliefs

so here's a thing that's fun if

we had time we could do a few more of  them but

quarters  I like

oranges

whole one so it's twice  as far away as

the other and on a retina

  as they

cart found out the cart found  out

by getting an ox eye and peeling the  back off and that great

the ox was dead  but

he was curious as to whether a  biological lens

worked like a glass one  and it did

so the one that's twice as  far away comes

out half the size we  can't see it that

way because we've got  this pachinko

machine called the brain  the

processes that the brain give rise  to some of them

we can call our beliefs  this big pink thing it's like the

Grand  Canyon and we've got a real-time

version  of it called the waking dream and

as our  neuro folks here will say

yeah the  difference between the waking dream and  the sleeping

dream has a lot to do with  just being

able to check out references  every

few seconds right isolation tanks  are

making a comeback if you have never  tried

one this is a thing from the 60s  you put

on a wetsuit you're in a blood  temperature

high saline bath plugged

  ears plugged eyes you can't feel a thing  you

can't hear a thing about ten

minutes  you start going on an LSD trip except  you don't need

any LSD because

the  references that

are normally used here  to keep this waking dream were less on

  track are no longer there and you start  generating

even while you're awake  everybody should do this

so what happens  with the quarters

is we believe that  they

are the same size and the

combination of that with what we get  from our retina

interestingly enough our  retina doesn't

win our beliefs Trump the  thing and

the further away guys about  80% to size subjectively

this is called  size constancy

  it's one of many many illusions

how to the extent that we are  disconnected

  actually from what our senses

McLuhan  said until I believe it I can't

see it  that's a good one

and Vishal's

favors we  cannot learn to see until we admit we  are blind

that's what happened when we  invented science

that was the first time  the human race really admitted that

it's  common sense ways of dealing with the  world

as what it seems were not valid

so  you have to do some work to get

his so here's something it happened  right outside my hotel

room in May there

  was a guy with a hammer and

you'd attack

some people the day before  further

south this is like 8th Avenue

  and 43rd Street and

here's what people  who

saw this attacked said oh mrs.  O'Grady

said he was in flight when he

was shot he looked like he was trying to  get away from the officers we've

heard  that recently and other incidents

ms

  khalsa said and I'm sorry maybe I'm  crazy but

I saw a man who is handcuffed  being shot

so this is seconds

after this  incident now fortunately

I heard the  shots I was

in my hotel room fortunately

  they had a camera surveillance camera so  here's

what the surveillance camera take  a look at the upper right hand corner

there's the

guy chasing the female cop  there's

the male cop shooting him wasn't

  handcuffed he wasn't running away wasn't

doing any of the things the eyewitnesses  saw a few seconds

ago they couldn't see

  what was on their retina

don't

ever get  in court don't ever go to a jury

trial  don't ever do anything that

relies on  witnesses

because the you know the  prosecutors have no

idea of any of this  stuff they just want to convict

good as  you know we're here today to honor

mrs.  flexor who you all know as your

first-grade teacher  she'll be here in just a minute

okay

what's

that look

what does that look  yeah

that's okay she's frightened out of  her mind that

is the number one I just

got this off the internet there are  zillions of surprise party

have been caught so this is a gold mine  if you're

interested in

people have done  so the Internet

has captured enough of  these some people have died of heart  attacks

from a surprise party

a couple

  of minutes later a release

in tears a  couple of minutes later

and her report

on this is this was the happiest day of  her life despite

the fact that she had  been almost frightened out of her

wits  so

Daniel Kahneman would call this first

  reaction the fast reaction system one  and

he called system one it's said well  it's not really

a system it's this is an  expository fiction this

is putting  together a lot of complicated

things  into one gloss

on fast reactions

things  reactions are not

what we would call  thoughtful reactions they

are more like  reflexes now

notice that misses call  misses flexor here

knew everything about  surprise parties

why was she surprised  well

seven plus or minus two she

about it but it wasn't in her current  context

her thinking thing

condiment  system two took

a while and figured out  everything safe

now we should ask you

  so besides adrenaline whatever else

happens when you get one of these  surprise reactions

what so

many things  like dopamine and serotonin

why well if  you have to

fight you don't want to feel  any pain

so what happens is your brain  dopes your

entire body up so you cannot  feel pain when

you're in a survival  situation and

guess what happens when  she didn't have to fight

  she was completely alert and coped

to  the gills on her own dope

you

have to  understand this stuff

so here's

an old  book that's still good it has about 40  different ways

of looking at the mind I  put

that up there just so you realize  that there are dozens

of perspectives  here they're not all the

last word some  of them are compatible with each

other  look at these kids

  these kids did

not get on this roller  coaster expecting to die

nobody does

and  yet and

they're presumably very happy at  the end

piccaboo works over and over

and  over again and the reason is is that  system

one can't be talked out of it  so one

a test that you do go next to a  door and

you watch me I'll slam that  door and

you'll get this even though you  you

know every single thing about it  doesn't matter

so it's important to  realize

that there is a heck of a lot of  mechanism

in there that deals with real  time reactions

to things and the  important

thing here is to understand  that this fast

guy is also dealing

with  what you might call the atoms of

thought  for the slow thinking

I'll just let that  idea sit

for a second learning

okay

you got your turn signal on all

okay

everybody remember that

you can't  your parent

is trying to give you if I  can't hear what they're saying

stop  signs over here you can

barely see  what's going so if you tried to drive  with

system two you're gonna

miss most  everything what happens is you

start  training these real-time you

get real  trying modules that get trained at being  able to do

all of these things and no  for a musical instrument might

take a  couple of years McCarthy pointed out

programming is somewhere between  learning to

drive and flying a plane

so  whenever we set

up something it's not  always just

a cognitive thing this is  one of the problems of some

approaches we took in the past as we  would tend

to say hey the drill and  practice thing is a

bad well it is a bad  idea that is not the way to get

the  repetitions the train system won but

the  thing is the cognitive approach actually  gives you something

that is much more  like this

driving situation and it's not  enough context

to do the kinds of  thinking that you need this implies

that  the pedagogy and the approach is

going  to be very very different that

somehow  you have to do the atoms

of thinking in  any thoughtful

thing without losing the  larger context

so music you get it by  having the

children play really great  music and you're willing to

sacrifice  everything else in order to get that

happen but you have to stay on it long  and I used to teach

guitar you have to  stay on it long

enough so that they  actually start developing the system one

that can handle all the real-time  demands

okay there are zillions of these  I

just went on the internet I found 20

on the internet but then it wound up  adding some

more these are all biases  that have been found well

known  you can think

of many of them are  aspects of this Grand Canyon

idea  many

of them are seven plus

or minus two  here's one that I wasn't

internet thing but it's something we  should look at here

thing we do all the  time is perfect reasoning

from wrong  premises because if we're in the

wrong  context and we reason brilliantly we're  not going

to get anywhere the Greeks  were graded the st. Thomas Aquinas was  great

at it didn't get anywhere because  the context

was wrong so

rationalization  rationalizing

rational thought all of  these things are secondary to

something  stronger looking

for the lamppost for  the lost keys that's

a version of Esau  on the cup

of soup giving up something  really important for convenience

like  finding the keys linear

scaling well  hardly anything

that's interesting is  linear and

so we can't give in to our  nervous system I'm looking

at scaling  and this has been really disastrous in  programming

because programming is  taught as though the program's

don't  turn into systems and the systems

turn into something large and so there  isn't an internet

and so forth this is  getting

completely miss taking simple  chemistry

for biology they're just not  in

the same ballpark so

Francis Bacon so

here's the row again one of the  advantages of reading a lot is

hardly  any

of us certainly me all

my ideas are  derivative

just because I've read  thousands

of books I didn't have to  puzzle this out

because bacon wrote a  book called the

Novum organum in 1620  where

he said hey look  our brains are messed up we

have bad  brains he called the

ways of messing up  idols so

we have we get serious errors  because of our genetics

we get serious  errors because of the culture we're in  we

get serious errors because of the  languages we use they don't

represent  what's actually out there we get serious

  it errors from the way academia hangs on

to bad ideas and teaches them over again  these are his four

idols anybody ever  read bacon he

said we need something to

  get around our bad brains a set of

heuristics is the term we'd used today  and

what

he called for was what he  called for science because

that's what  Novum organum the rest of the title

was  a new way of

dealing with knowledge

and  science

is not the knowledge right  because

the knowledge is is in this  context

what science is is the  negotiation

between what's out there and  what we can represent

this is the big  idea this is the idea

in school this is the idea we should be  teaching it's

one of the biggest ideas  of all time it

isn't the knowledge it's  the relationship because what's

out  there is only knowable

by phenomena that  is being filtered in

every possible way  and we

don't know whether our brain is  even capable of representing

the stuff  and so to

think about science as the  truth is completely

wrong it's not the

  right way to look at it but if you think  about

is the negotiation between the  best

you can do right now and stuff  that's out there that where

completely sure you're in a very strong  position

science has been the most  powerful

thought system

human beings  have ever invented because

it gave up  the idea of truth and it

substituted for  a thousand variations

of false some of  which are incredibly

powerful  right this is the big

idea so we're  gonna think about computing

this is one  way and I've

Seymour Papert thought  about it in a different way but

this is  one way of thinking about

Wow computers  they are representatives

about representations  can simulate

ideas we get a very good  much better

sense of dealing

with  thinking about these complexities okay

  so

maybe one I think we're

one last

part  of this pep talk and then I'll turn it  over to V

Shaw so let's go back to the  pink plane

here and

let's see we're at a  place

on the pink plane and we have a  goal so we're

we're at a we

only are  looking in that direction because that's

where we're going we see B we say let's  plot a course

to B but guess what

the  world is nonlinear so we're really in  that

because we didn't think about all  the dimensions okay

so we can explore we

  can tinker away around it that's better  if

that was good we can engineer a  superhighway and if

we're really  adventurous we can invent the airplane

  forget about land travel let's just fly  over

that mountain and here's the big  idea once we decide

to take off from  land travel

we not only are in

a  different world we're not we

discover  we're in a blue world and the blue world  has

a much better destination than than  B

so I've submit this as a metaphor that  can

be used in many different areas

like  simple one often

you have to go away  from your goal to get to you go

that is  a toughy remember we're

primates the way  they catch monkeys in Burma

everybody  know this Oh everybody

should know this  okay so

monkeys are primates like us and  what they do is they

they just fasten  jars and

they put a big nut

  the monkeys reach in to get that nut

  they can't get

there aren't handout okay

now  that monkey could

escape anytime by just  letting go of this nut but

hey don't let goes and nothing that  sound

like any human activity you've  ever heard they

can't let go than that  so

in the morning they just

come around  and so that I like monkey brains and  Burma

so they come around just collect  these monkeys

that could get away  anytime they wanted that

isn't us I  don't know what it is

  so being able to go away from

the goal  this is a heart like NSF

is completely  blown it in computing

because they've  given up on problem finding in

doing  stuff that really doesn't have a goal

in  the proposal for example goal

should be  to find the goal somebody needs

to pay  for that the

engineering as a refinement  of something

that's more like tinkling  or bricolage see more used to kala

then  this idea that hey maybe surface

travel  isn't the deal at all let's do

something  qualitatively different and start flying

  and once you've made that effort

to  qualitatively change

suddenly you have  the possibility of scaping from this  whole

context which was actually holding  you back ok

I'll leave you with that  thank you very much for listening