Hard-boiled Egghead

By David Ruenzel

As perhaps befits a man who never received anything but D's in school for classroom conduct, the oddly cantankerous yet charming Roger Schank, a world leader in artificial intelligence and (some think) visionary of educational software, insists that no one has the right to tell students what to learn or how to learn it.

Sitting in his corner office before a coffee table strewn with the Styrofoam refuse of a carryout lunch, the 48-year-old director of Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences gleefully attacks state education mandates, standardized tests, and computer programs that ask students to "blast'' verbs as if they were in some kind of electronic shooting gallery. The enemy, as Schank sees it, is the prescribed curriculum--a kind of speed trap designed to stop kids who are all too avidly chasing their own interests. The American way, Schank believes, is to let people travel in their chosen directions; learning, he argues, should be about the pursuit of happiness. "Fun is always valuable,'' he says. "If it's not fun, you won't learn it.''

Creating computer programs that are both "fun'' and educationally sound, as opposed to those that are only divertingly entertaining, has been the institute's raison d'être since Schank, in conjunction with Northwestern and Andersen Consulting, founded it in 1989. Its educational software, still being refined, is currently in place in six Chicago-area school districts, and Schank and his colleagues are exploring ways to market it nationally. The institute also produces job-training software embodying similar educational principles for Andersen and other high-powered sponsors such as Ameritech and...