laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) (02/26/86)
In article <204@bu-cs.UUCP> bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes: > >From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vince Manis) >>The average introductory student has no longterm commitment to computer >>science, so one ought to teach him/her a directly usable skill; that means >>teaching a language s/he has heard of. > >This is the attitude I object to that leaves us nowhere in Computer Science >Education. I believe one has to abandon the job training mentality and just >teach their subject on the sole assumption that everyone in the room is there >to build a foundation for computer science. If that necessitates opening >a different course for 'programming', so be it. I am writing a long flame on this point for net.cse. (I started arguing this one in net.singles...) But, synchronisity again -- everybody starts talking about what I am thinking about as soon as I start thinking. If you walk to your local undergrad csc terminal room, you will find that the bulk of people there are not there because they have a personal commitment to thinking -- especially about computer science. They are there to get ``job training''. While I think that there is nothing wrong with job training, I don't think that it should be taught *at university*. You end up short changing everybody. There are wonderful thinkers who can't hack the ``directly usuable skill'' section of csc courses and who flunk out. There are people who are totally uninterested in the theory of computer science, who flunk out. And you end up with people who were really interested in computer science theory who are so burned out by the time they get through university they don't really want to think any more. And, finally, you get the people who have great degrees but still can't program to any professional standard. I think that this comes of trying to be all things for all people. (I also think that it comes of taking government money -- once you start taking it you can no longer afford to be called elitist. But people with a personal commitment to thinking for its own sake are rare, and an institution that caters to them must, by definition, be elitist.) I have cross-posted this to net.cse. -- Laura Creighton ihnp4!hoptoad!laura utzoo!hoptoad!laura sun!hoptoad!laura laura@lll-crg.arpa
chen@gitpyr.UUCP (Ray Chen) (03/05/86)
In article <558@hoptoad.uucp>, laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) writes: > If you walk to your local undergrad csc terminal room, you will find that > the bulk of people there are not there because they have a personal > commitment to thinking -- especially about computer science. They are > there to get ``job training''. While I think that there is nothing wrong > with job training, I don't think that it should be taught *at university*. I agree. I consider job training something that is aimed primarly at providing you with new tools. How well you use them is up to you and your native abilities. A university education should be geared for something different. I'm not sure I can express what I want to get across, but here goes... I believe in the concept of a "liberal-arts" undergraduate education. A university education should be aimed exposing people to different ways of looking at the world. When you walk out of a physics class, a philosophy class, or a computer science class, ideally, you should now have a better idea as to how a physicist, philosopher, or computer scientist views his world. As a by-product, you may pick up some tools in the bargain, but the main gain should be a look at a different way of thinking. A university education should be beneficial long after IBM 370 assembler is obsolete. Ray Chen gatech!gitpyr!chen