And They Were Thinking? Basic, Logo, Personality and Pedagogy - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 119

“idea of 'body-syntonic' representations of knowledge.” (For a discussion of design-
ing computer languages to correspond to natural language see Murnane [34]).
Along with Turtle commands came definite iteration: REPEAT :N, relieving the
programmer of the need to write all loops recursively. A recursive loop can only be
executed by writing a procedure and then executing it. In keeping with the idea of
observing actions as the commands were entered, you could now type REPEAT 4
[FORWARD 100 RIGHT 90] and watch a square being drawn. Note also the close
correspondence to English syntax.
Once the Turtle migrated from the floor to the screen, Logo became accessible and
viable in any classroom.
Papert's other outstanding attribute was his ability as a teacher, educational theorist
and writer. Probably no one has matched his output, or perhaps, his influence, on
educational programming. His argument is that students “do not understand the kind
of thing a mathematical structure is: they do not see the point of the whole enterprise”
[15 p23]. By using Logo and the Turtle, these concepts can be made visible and con-
crete. Nevertheless, his pronouncements on the promise of Logo to help teach
mathematical concepts [35 p3] such as angle, length, variables and differential ge-
ometry, as well as “epistemological primitives, such as the notion of a mathematical
system itself” (p. 23) have not been supported by hard research. Ross and Howe [36
p147] found that “the research of the last decade into 'mathematics through pro-
gramming' have been more encouraging than discouraging, but only mildly so.”
Rather sadly, the weight of subsequent research suggests that programming in
Logo, by itself, does not teach Mathematics. Students, unless specifically taught about
these points, keep Logo and Mathematics entirely separate in their minds, and few
teachers, perhaps persuaded by Papert, seem to do this, or do so with much success.
An experiment with Year 8 students, all of whom had used Logo (in the form of
LogoWriter), showed almost no traces of Logo when asked to perform tasks in which
it could be expected to appear if Papert's theories are correct [32]. There were almost
no signs of Logo functioning as a meta-language. Even Abelson, Barnberger, Gold-
stein and Papert [22 p10] rather sadly remark that “Logo did not succeed in displacing
Basic as the almost universal computer language for schools.”
6 Beyond the 60s
At a minimum … the teacher must be absolutely fluent in at thinking in Logo.
Brown and Rubinstein [19: 4]
Anybody who is at all serious about writing programs must avoid the
temptation of thinking in a programming language. Juliff [37: 38]
These two quotations really summarise the different educational and practical orienta-
tions of Logo and Basic. Logo was intended to be used in the closed environment of
education as a language to think with , and Basic was intended to introduce students to
the world of programming. Kurtz [9 p3] insisted that “our one mistake was to include
the word 'Beginners' in the name” but the significant letter in the title stood for 'All-
purpose.' Basic has been used for professional applications almost from its appear-
ance. Logo has not, and was never intended to be.