

Alan Kay on teaching children to program (1993) - felideon
http://www.smalltalk.org/smalltalk/TheEarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk_IV.html#smalltalkAndChildren

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felideon
Excerpts I found interesting:

\- Tools provide a path, a context, and almost an excuse for developing
enlightenment, but no tool ever contained it or can dispense it. [Cesare]
Pavese observed: to know the world we must construct it. In other words, we
make not just to have, but to know. but the having can happen without most of
the knowing taking place.

\- They love to do, even when they are not sure exactly what they are doing.

\- What is difficult is to determine what ideas to put forth and how deeply
they should penetrate at a given child's developmental level.

\- Even very young children can understand and use interactive
transformational tools. The first ones are their hands!

\- They can answer any question whose answer requires the application of just
one of these tools. But it is extremely difficult for them to answer any
question that requires two or more transformations. Yet they have no problem
applying [sequences] of transformations, exploring "forward."

\- It seems that what needs to be learned and taught is now to package up
transformations in twos and threes in a manner similar to learning a strategic
game like checkers.

