Grassroots Smalltalk (was Re: Funding)

Gary Fisher gafisher at sprynet.com
Fri Dec 13 20:48:41 UTC 2002


Hi, Aaron!

My reference to "local schools" was not meant to imply anything quite so ambitious as storming the CS building.  <s>

My experience has been with the Community Education programs operated by most area public (and a few private) schools, which seem always to be looking for something new to offer potential students.  The system is fairly open -- those who wish to teach develop a course outline and present it to the Community Ed folks at the school.  They determine whether the proposed course could be supported to the level required by the instructor, and if they have no particular objections they publicize the proposed course for an upcoming term.  These classes are offered to the general public as well as regularly enrolled elementary, high school and college students, who receive a discount (up to 100%) on the tuition.  The schools provide the facilities and other support, and the instructor receives the balance of tuitions after the school's expenses are deducted.  If the proposed course fails to attract a sufficient number of students, it is cancelled and nobody's out a dime.

I've seen students as young as third grade in some of these classes (not mine) and some well into retirement.  This is not a primarily academic group -- the courses are most commonly "personal growth" related -- but survey/overview math, physics, and other courses are both welcome and popular.  However, the academic *setting* is a benefit, and of course the fact that students *want* to be in the class is a huge boost.  Best of all is the fact that teaching (anything!) to interested students does almost as much for the teacher's understanding as for the students'.  Sometimes more . . .

If your community doesn't already have such a program, work to encourage it even if you don't plan to teach a class yourself, but if you're really passionate about Smalltalk, this kind of teaching could help both the Smalltalk community and your own.

Gary Fisher


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Aaron J Reichow 
  To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
  Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 1:02 PM
  Subject: Grassroots Smalltalk (was Re: Funding)


  On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Gary Fisher wrote:

  > If I might make a suggestion, it might be worthwhile to investigate whether
  > your local school(s) would support a modest, introductory Smalltalk course.

  Many have often pondered on this, definately a correlation between a
  language being taught in the Universities and the language being used by
  companies.

  But it's a lot harder to get a college CS dept to add a Smalltalk class,
  even where there are sypathizers.

  For a couple years, I taught a bunch of middle schoolers (5-8th grade) how
  to use computers.  They'd done a little with Logo, but I really wanted to
  do some Squeak, but my plan was foiled by the very restrictive setup that
  many school districts have for their computers.

  (fantasy :mode 'deslusional "

  Would it be great if we could get as many Squeakers as possible to go into
  their community and do some grassroots, guerilla training of the
  proletariat in Squeaking?  Perhaps we could storm the corperate and
  adecemic worlds, mouse in hand to replace the pitchfork, and take over!

  ") ;; s-exps were always more efficient than XML/SGML. :P

  Regards,
  Aaron

    Aaron Reichow  ::  UMD ACM Pres  ::  http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/
  "the only difference it makes if some dust on the clay"  :: atmosphere

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