Hi Alan,
Perhaps part of the difficullty to introduce s-comp in schools lies right at the computing industry doorstep - the prevalence of HTTP protocol, HTML/JSP/otherSP manufacturing, seems to show the industry is stuck deeply in "driver's ed" view and do not exactly show that the industry has the mental capacity to invest in creating something better, so it seems hard to ask any better of education. Maybe the "driver's ed-comp education" just follows what "driver's ed-comp industry" is asking for...
However, as you said (if I understood correctly), the best path may be to take a new cross-field approach "science and math by computation" that would not threaten the established, and provide fun, experimental approach, and help developing creativity, show building process rather than result, and hands on deep understanding in all three.
I am not a teacher or educator, but I think in all this one has to remember the importance of personal example and motivation some teachers provide (although it must be very hard if teachers are to be judged only by immediate results of their students following a predefined curriculum). My physics teacher in grade 7 and 8 and math teacher in grade 9 provided me with more motivation than any teacher after that, but it was not "measurable" that year (although, looking back, to some degree it was). Thanks for your comments,
Milan
On 2006 April 23 06:09, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi Milan --
Yes, what you describe is what I've called the "driver's ed" (DE) view of computing -- and this goes back at least as far as the "Nation At Risk" manifesto in (I think) 1983. It's the simplest way for school people and parents to feel they are doing something modern and relevant with computing.
The kind of computing that Seymour and (a few years later) I have been espousing since the 60s is in the same epistemological camp as real math and real science -- and most school people and parents don't understand what these are and why they are important.
I think people who are interested in Seymour's insights will have a simpler time if they just lump real math, real science and "Seymour Computing" (I'll call this s-comp) into one composite subject that is not associated with DE-computing. My generic term for this would be "real science" -- the reason for this is that "school math" has been aimed at simple arithmetic (the "driver's ed" of math) and there are now huge schooling standards and testing for this, just as with DE-computing.
Science is a little more vague for most people (and a little scary for others) so there is much less force behind standards and testing right now. This allows much more of the real stuff to be done (and combined with r-math and s-comp) if we could get parents and teachers to understand it better.
So I would advise focusing on r-science as a way to help teach children thinking (and debugging of thinking) and powerful ideas and ways to represent them (including r-math and its sibling s-comp).
Cheers
Alan
At 06:29 PM 4/22/2006, Milan Zimmermann wrote:
On 2006 April 9 11:12, Jim Ford wrote:
Alan Kay wrote:
Hi Jim --
Squeak runs exactly the same on more than 25 platforms, including MS.
Hi Alan.
What I actually meant was MS apps. - Word, Excel, Powerpoint and I.E.. Most members of staff are scarcely aware that anything else exists, and have so little understanding of computers that they can't even imagine a need for anything else. I don't think this attitude is uncommon in U.K. secondary schools and is largely due to schools needing to 'deliver the curriculum', and pressure to perform well in published exam 'league tables'.
From my limited observation, this is similar what we have in Canada,
Ontario as well. My daughters are in grade 9, and while the high school's program is quite involved in computer-related classes (there are various forms of business classes, accounting, publishing, "computer science", networking and probably more), it is all centered around learning MS Office, sort of MS Office training for the kid's first job. This is even more ironic due to the fact that the Ontario government spent good millions of dollars on buying StarOffice, (and of course everyone can install OO), the school system simply does not seem to use it at all in the courses. Not that OO would be a big step up from MS Office, but the rest of the world can eventually save in that format (notion of which escapes many of our professional developer colleagues, so why should school teachers be asked to be aware).
It is as if high school education would be a caterer to business. I do not think it is the teachers' fault, I am imagining a reaction of a parent who's child is being taught something like OO instead: "Why don't you teach them MS Office, .net or Java, they will not use this stuff in their job, and they wil be able to get $XYZ an hour doing Java .. or happily create an Access database for the boss ... or something like that :(".
BTW, for computer science class in the high school, it is Java and VB. A friend of ours kids go to school in Vienna and they teach them Java as well, so I suppose the ordeal is world - wide. Last year I wrote to one of the teachers suggesting to volunteer a extra-curriculum class using Squeak but did not get an answer, I suppose they did not know what it was (altough I tried to explain).
Also, on your note about 'delivering a curriculum', it seems that with more pressure to "standardize" and "measure", any interest to focus on creativity is disappearing, what is interesting is that it math and science classes seem to be suffering the most.
Milan
It probably also helps explain why the U.K. continues to slide into seedy decline! If Britain wasn't a 'nation of shopkeepers' in Napoleon's day, then it certainly is now - factories being pulled down and supermarkets being built in their places!
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