Take a surgeon and a teacher from a hundred years in the past and place them in their respective workplaces of the present. The surgeon is unlikely to even begin to appreciate the concepts and complexities of modern surgery. The teacher, on the other hand, would feel right at home in today's classroom, if not necessarily with the specific subject matter. The point is that teaching as a method has barely changed in a long time. Some may argue that education is a basic process that does not change.
Computers are already in most mainstream schools.
According to Papert, however, the educational establishment has embraced computers not as a method of change, but as a subject of study in its own right. The curriculum includes the math lesson, the English lesson, and the computer-literacy lesson. As such, the establishment can claim, with some justification, that it has integrated advanced technology into education. Computers are not an academic subject, Papert contends, but rather a mechanism for exploring and integrating all of the traditional subjects. Researchers have found that these techniques are able to improve students' standardized test scores and are considered to be innovative and worthwhile under many circumstances.