rwp@hogpc.UUCP (R.PAUL) (04/06/84)
[And the Great Educational Debate rages on.] Until now, I've been a passive observer of the debates on supporting higher education and education itself. Until now. Recently one participant submitted a rather lengthy article including a large number of statements which I would attribute to a very narrow point of view. I intend to challenge several of them here. I apologize for the hodgepodge of topics in this article. I thought it best to reply via one long article rather than several shorter ones. By the way, if the statements made were intended to be humorous rather than serious, I am sorry for taking up net space. I assume that they were intended to be serious since no ":-)"s appeared. And the debate begins: > Indented statements are from unisoft!phil. > I personally gave up all remaining vestiges of faith > in our "higher" educational system when I saw a UCLA > history course use as the course book one that compared > Angela Davis to Thomas Paine. Not all history books or (insert your favorite course) texts can be masterpieces of educational literature. Most all, I hope, are written by very human authors who have their own opinions, some of which may differ from the collective mass opinion. I think that the biased, propagandist view of history we get in our public school educations brings us into college history courses with a certain amount of prejudice. If we are to truly see past the official versions of history we get in grade school and high school we will have to read a certain amount of "radical" material. In doing so, we will find that we can't accept everything any one author says as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; but by getting views from a variety of sources (perhaps including one that compares Angela Davis to Thomas Paine), we can be in a better position to decide for ourselves what should be believed. In learning to make decisions that affect more than one person it is necessary to be able to understand widely differing viewpoints and choose the solution which is best for all concerned, not just those who have the viewpoint the decision-maker favors. > In hiring people, the 3 or 4 top people I've ever seen > all worked their way through college. Some did have student > or private loans, but the bulk of the money was from their > own work, not Mommy & Daddy or student loans that they > intended to default on. I would have to concur with this observation, but not all of us can be one of the top 3 or 4 people, and not all of us are able to make enough money (before or during college) to work our way through in a reasonable amount of time (say, less than 6 years for a B.S. or B.A. or B.<whatever>). Thus loans are necessary unless a student is wealthy before entering college. Furthermore, the students that really need loans can't get them through normal channels (because of lack of credit rating), so the Guaranteed Student Loans are a must if we want to make higher education available to those who want it regardless of financial background. I do think that it should be made nearly impossible to default on a student loan and that students who *really* don't need them (i.e. use them to buy a car or super-duper stereo) shouldn't get them. As a side note, after having lived with people whose parents were putting them through college, I think that it should be illegal for colleges to accept checks signed "Mommy and Daddy". :-) As a group, those people seem to be the worst students, the most annoying in the dorms (stereos blasting at all hours, drunk or stoned a good part of the time, etc.), and, in general, the greatest thorn in the side of serious students. If you are in this group and an exception, I apologize to you. > BUT -- many student loans proponents argue that the loans are > needed to train our technological work force. Fine -- if you > want to use an economic argument, let's shut down all the > political "science" departments, the athletic departments, > history, etc. and turn out the techies. And insure that only the rich are allowed to pursue other vocations? What about rounding out the techies' educations? Success in a tech- nical career involves a lot more than pure technical know-how. If a person were to only take technical courses, that person would probably not be of much use after a few (5? 10?) years in an entry-level position. Really contributing in a technical organization involves being able to learn quickly in most any given new environment and being able to consider all aspects of a problem. Only mindless order- takers who perform a job that is specified in detail can survive with only technical knowledge. Essential (yes, even for a technical job) skills are developed in many of the non-technical courses that engineers and computer scientists take. > In any case -- I'm tired of seeing Berkeley CS students that > don't know C and are taught Pascal. Ugh - using Pascal as a > teaching language for CS is like parachute training without > the chute - you don't know how mistaken you were until the > end. This is really quite tangential to the main argument, but it struck a sour note with me, so I'll debate it. C may be a great language for "real" programmers, but it's not the only one around. I think that popularity of use would make Pascal a language which would be more important to learn than C. Of course, using that argument maybe CS students should be taught with Cobol or Basic, and I definitely wouldn't advocate that. However, I do think that Pascal is superior as a teaching language. The unforgiving nature of Pascal (e.g. define everything, make sure types are consistent, etc.) really makes the student think about what he/she is doing and do so in an organized manner. C lets a programmer get away with a good deal, and Heaven help the instructor who has to try to read C code from 50 students. I've found that once I learned Pascal other languages were fairly simple to learn (because I would find an algorithm first and then write code rather than starting from code and building an algorithm which C tends to encourage). I include C as a language that was relatively easy to learn after having learned Pascal. > I really tired (what am I, Marvin??) of "rounded" college > grads that don't know why the Japanese attacked us at Pearl > Harbor, when the Great Depression was, what the Bay of Pigs > means, when the transistor was invented, who the current > leader of the Soviet Union/the UK/West Germany/France, or > even who our own VP is -- oh shit or ANYTHING! My undergraduate college's president once said something like, "Education is basically a process of information transfer." HORSEPOOPY! What rote knowledge I have means almost nothing to how good I can be on the job or how good I can be in life. The knowledge mentioned here falls into that category. (As an aside, whose reason for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should I "know"? The reason taught in a Japanese history class or a United States' history class?) A rounded student should be able to think logically, communicate effectively, comprehend opposing viewpoints, make decisions, etc. Such things do not depend on one's knowing when the Great Depression was or when the transistor was invented. They may depend upon the student's being able to research those facts, but being able to formulate a "plan of attack" for a task should also be something a rounded student should be able to do. I really cringe when I see people measure a person's intelligence or the success of that person's education by how much trivia that person can recite! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Enough said. This has already grown too long. Rick Paul AT&T Information Systems Laboratories Lincroft, New Jersey ihnp4!hogpc!rwp
norskog@fortune.UUCP (Lance Norskog) (04/09/84)
If I might carry the banner...
The purpose of higher education is not to teach you things, it is to teach
you how to think. I don't know many people I have met from a certain
"learn-by-doing" school who have to have their arm twisted before they
will step back from a problem and think about it instead of just grabbing
a way to solve it from their (astonishingly extensive) bag of tricks.
About C & PASCAL, I did a lot of assignments in both, and I got them
done in 2/3's the time in PASCAL. If the person you are interviewing
knows how to program, and to think, he can learn ANY rational
programming language in 3 days. You'll get more of a feel for his
computational abilities by talking to him, and gauging how well he
speaks English, than by matching his professed languages to those of
your needs.
Lance C. Norskog
Fortune Systems, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA
{cbosgd,hpda,harpo,sri-unix,amd70,decvax!ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!norskogron@brl-vgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (04/09/84)
OK...I will agree that students who worked while in college probably were better prospects than those who didn't. But I contend that this is because they were working, not because of any enforced responsibility for paying for their own education. My tuition and a majority of my living expenses were paid by "mommy and daddy" but I worked full time in the summer and part time during classes. In addition I was on the management of the FM radio station on campus and had official positions in other campus activities. I found that the work and operational experience gained outside of class was a much bigger asset the the (snicker) computer education to be learned with in the Hopkins curriculum. -Ron
bwm@ccieng2.UUCP ( Brad Miller) (04/09/84)
The argument seems to be centering now on student loans. The main problem with these loans seems to be twofold, 1) the high interest subsidy, paid by taxpayers, and 2) the high rate of default, paid by taxpayers. If you want a workable system, may I suggest the following: I am not opposed to student loans. I had them myself. The criteria for getting the loan should be total availability to ANYONE attending college full time at an accredited university. There is no sense in giving bennies on the basis of income or need, etc. This is inherently socialistic. Now, here's where we save some money. Make the payback period 15 years instead of the current 10 (or flexible depending on interest) and charge the CURRENT interest rate (thus no subsidy). Still charge (as they do now) for the insurance premium. Then, to cure the default problem, let the IRS collect defaulted loans. If you accept the loan with the guv's guarentee, you give up this much privacy. You needed your SS number to get the loan, so the IRS knows damn well where you are, and can attach your salary if need be to collect. Treat the defaulted loan just like taxes owed the guv, and keep charging interest at the current rate. The subsidy of the taxpayers into the program would be quite low (admin costs, and collection costs, but we are paying that anyway), and we are still providing credit towards an education to those without a good enuff credit rating to gain a personal loan on their own. Comments? Brad Miller -- ...[rlgvax, ritcv]!ccieng5!ccieng2!bwm
wbpesch@ihuxp.UUCP (Walt Pesch) (04/14/84)
An example is the reason behind the almost universally prevalent
requisite of the one year of geometry. Though vary few of us ever use
it, it has all taught us the basis of mathematical logic. It is for
this vary reason that many schools right now have been replacing the
standard year of geometry with computer science programs teaching the
kids programming.
Still waiting for the bolt from the skies,
Walt Pesch
AT&T Technologies
ihnp4!ihuxp!wbpeschmauney@ncsu.UUCP (Jon Mauney) (04/16/84)
> An example is the reason behind the almost universally prevalent > requisite of the one year of geometry. Though vary few of us ever use > it, it has all taught us the basis of mathematical logic. It is for > this vary reason that many schools right now have been replacing the > standard year of geometry with computer science programs teaching the > kids programming. I don't want to start a debate over math education, but I must protest this maligning of geometry! Many's the time I have wondered over some minor problem until I realize that I learned the answer in tenth grade. And I must say that the Euclidean model is an excellent approximation of the real world for my purposes. Take a poll of the readers of net.rec.build-things-with-your-hands and see how many use geometry. Why, just yesterday I was walking down one of the hallowed halls here and overheard two students discussing a problem in computer graphics; one was explaining to the other, with a slight touch of wonder in his voice, "and apparently, if you know two angles and one of the sides, that completely determines the rest of the triangle!" Now, ask me how often I use my knowledge of differential calculus. -- _Doctor_ Jon Mauney, mcnc!ncsu!mauney \__Mu__/ North Carolina State University