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From: andrew@garfield.UUCP (Andrew Draskoy)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.cse
Subject: Re: Should Computer Science be taught at the High School level?
Message-ID: <2237@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 00:38:16 EST
Article-I.D.: garfield.2237
Posted: Wed Dec 19 00:38:16 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Dec-84 01:51:42 EST
References: <241@mss.UUCP> <705@ames.UUCP> <82@uwvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrew@garfield.UUCP (Andrew Draskoy)
Distribution: net
Organization: Memorial U. of Nfld. C.S. Dept., St. John's
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Who is going to teach the courses?  Around here, the teachers mostly
learned what they knew from a two-week course on BASIC offered to teachers
during the summer.  Obviously some of them would know more, but how many?

Rather than teaching Computer Science per se, I think a better background
in logic is needed.  I seem to recall having being taught about the basic
boolean operations, minterms, k-maps, etc. in at least three beginning or
near-beginning C.S. courses.  In addition, the main student-killer course
here is the discrete structures course, in which it has become apparent
that most students don't have an adequate familiarity with proofs.

A little bit of logic would perhaps set students into the right
"frame-of-mind" for doing Computer Science later.

-----
Andrew Draskoy
{akgua,allegra,ihnp4,utcsrgv}!garfield!andrew
The opinions expressed above may not represent those of the author
after he has had some sleep.
-- 
Andrew Draskoy
{akgua,allegra,ihnp4,utcsrgv}!garfield!andrew
The opinions expressed above may not represent those of the author
after he has had some sleep.