[Squeakland] the non universals

[mmille10@comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com>
> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:33:37 -0700, <mmille10 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> > No, they didn't use the term "office suite" back then. I was relating  
> > the curriculum to what it would be called now. We did learn about how to  
> > use a word processor, spreadsheet, and database application, though.  
> > Yes, they were separate applications. May be I didn't make that clearin  
> > what I wrote. I remember we used AppleWriter (I think), and VisiCalc,and  
> > some database app. whose name I can't remember, all on Apple II's.
> 
> Well, let me apologize if I sounded overly picky. There was a very short  
> window (historically speaking) for when "office suite" might have meant  
> anything other than "Microsoft Office". It's depressing to hear that (at  
> least in your experience) the needle went from oddball geek hobby to  
> mundane replacement for typewriter, ledger and filing system. To their  
> current state: Monopoly perpetuators.

Just a simple misunderstanding. :)

My experience with computing in Jr. high was fun, interesting, and challenging, 
largely because we were allowed to bring in our own creativity. From what I've 
been hearing this stands in stark contrast to what passes for computing in 
schools now, which sounds tedious and boring. IMO it's no wonder people don't 
want to go into CS. Their first experience with it is like "stale bread" 
compared to what I had. There are other reasons for the decrease in interest, 
but inspiration to move towards it should not be overlooked.

> Too much of it is a matter of interest destroyed: A student attacks a  
> subject vigorously but is crushed in some manner or another, say with the  
> sort of ritualistic kind of "teaching" Alan describes, where there is no  
> understanding, and these days where the rituals have been replaced with a  
> shadow of something that "builds self-esteem" while even denigrating  
> understanding. And of course the usual brutal traditions of bad teachers.

I agree with you about the moves towards "self-esteem" practices that only end 
up deceiving students and parents into believing the students are learning 
everything they can when in fact they're missing out.

I experienced the ritualistic methodology you speak of in a couple of the 
primary schools I attended. It didn't agree with me. Fortunately I didn't have 
to stay there long. I grew up with a single mother who just so happened to be a 
Montessori teacher. :) She wanted me to be in creative, interesting schools 
whenever possible. When I was young I was moved in and out of private and public 
schools. Things stabilized for me at 5th grade when she found a public school 
district that fit reasonably well with what she and I both wanted for me.

My mother and I recounted this recently. I was telling her a bit about this 
discussion on here. She said when she was evaluating what schools I should 
attend she looked at the curricula/programs and she talked to the principals. 
She said principals had a lot of power to shape the schools. They hired the 
teachers. If she liked what the principal had to say, she'd consider sending me 
to that school.

I had a mixture of good and bad teachers, and as Kay said in response to your 
post, I had some that inspired me, even years later, to study further what they 
taught.

One was a civics teacher in Jr. high. He was the only teacher I can 
remember who made an effort to really show us what goes on in politics, 
democracy, functioning governments, and courtrooms, by setting up these 
scenarios in the classroom, and then showing us our own behavior in these 
settings. In one exercise he set up a scenario where the class was "on a 
spaceship" and had landed on a livable planet, and we were setting up a new 
government from scratch. He then let us loose debating and agreeing to systems 
of government, and laws that would govern our society. It was simplistic, of 
course. The interesting thing was what new ideas emerged when existing 
constraints were removed. These exercises were fascinating, because we were 
participating in and observing a society in a microcosm.

We were allowed to be as opinionated as we wanted to be, and we were 
allowed to discuss those opinions with the other students. Sometimes the teacher 
would jump in to provide some clarity and adult experience to the conversation. 
I still remember some of the experiences we had in that class. Interesting 
stuff.

Another was a CS professor at the university I attended as an undergrad. My goal 
was to take a graduate level course on compilers since I was curious about them. 
Before I could get there I had to take a senior level course on programming 
languages, where we explored different types of languages, their conceptual 
underpinnings, history, and some of what made them tick. This was in 1991. We 
did some labs in a few of the dynamic languages, including Smalltalk. I 
remember the professor explained to us that Smalltalk was originally not just a 
language, but a computer system. I don't think he used the term "operating 
system" to describe it. From what I understand now it would fit well in a 
course on operating systems, though the CS curriculum apparently didn't 
recognize it for what it was. This professor did. He said the language was a 
part of the system, and the system could be modified via. the language while it 
was running. He also said it had a graphical interface with windows.
 I remember being a bit dazzled by this description. It sounded very 
interesting, but it gave me a bit of headache trying to understand what he was 
talking about. I eventually got it after pondering it for a while. It's too bad 
he didn't have any of the videos of the ST-80 demos from Xerox.

We didn't use the full Smalltalk system for our assignments, but rather GNU 
Smalltalk, using only its scripting mode. I had a great time, brief as it was, 
programming in it. It was my first OOP language. What I liked about it is it 
seemed that one could "program with concepts" rather than with types. I had the 
experience of creating a domain-specific language (that's what they call it 
now), and the pleasure of doing that came from it feeling so natural to use. I 
could express a problem in a notation that was basically native to the domain. I 
still remember the experience. It's the reason I even thought to look at Squeak 
last year once I heard about it.

BTW, Alan, your presentation at ETech 2003 on Squeak and Croquet, and the 
history it built upon blew my mind. I watched it online. It took the Smalltalk 
experience I had in college up to a whole new level. The feeling I had 
afterwards was, "What have I been doing all of these years?" Thanks for that! :)

> But you know, it doesn't seem to matter much what subject it is, I've seen  
> the same thing in all of them: if the student is interested, nothing will  
> stop him; if not, nothing will help. Some of this is a matter of native  
> interest: We are not all interested in the same things, and no matter how  
> delightfully presented, the subject will remain at best a mild curiosity.  

I guess I can relate to this through a couple of experiences I had with math 
subjects, but usually this was not the case with others. If a teacher made an 
effort to teach a subject well I tended to get interested enough to learn it. 
There was meat to these subjects, and the teacher tried to convey an 
understanding of that.

I had decent teachers in Calculus and linear algebra, insofar as they made an 
effort to cover topics completely using their methodology and engage their 
students, but I had a hard time getting interested in the subject and/or 
relating to it. I think it was largely because what they did was teach a few 
basic concepts in depth, and then spent the rest of the class on high level 
concepts, never delving into what was really going on. So basically all I 
learned from them was pattern matching and symbol manipulation. This only got 
interesting when I took a CS class where one of our assignments was to create a 
Lisp program that did symbolic differentiation, which heavily used these 
same skills.

The part of all this that felt so empty was I could go through the motions and 
get a correct answer, by following some rules, without having a real grasp of 
what I was describing with my algebraic equations. It's a scary feeling, 
actually. I felt like I was learning very little, and in retrospect I think that 
feeling was correct. In large part the classes were a waste of my time, unless 
the goal was not to teach me math, but these other skills. I've sometimes 
wondered if that's the reason the CS curriculum requires one to take Calculus. 
I've heard more than one person tell me that it's good for CS students to take 
lots of math, because it indirectly teaches you how to approach problems 
logically. Well, it did that for me, but I don't think I really learned 
Calculus.

I had a few experiences back then that demonstrated to me that I had very little 
understanding of linear math, despite being able to produce correct answers in 
it by following some rules. I didn't come to truly understand the subject until 
I took physics.

---Mark
mmille10 at comcast.net
http://tekkie.wordpress.com