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From: brian@uwvax.UUCP (Brian Pinkerton)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.cse
Subject: Re: Should Computer Science be taught at the High School level?
Message-ID: <82@uwvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Dec-84 21:15:03 EST
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Posted: Sat Dec 15 21:15:03 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Dec-84 03:55:08 EST
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Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
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Logic is certainly the most important word here.  The ability to arrive
at a conclusion given some inputs.

Also important, I think, is the ability to break down an idea into its
components.  This is why I DON'T advocate teaching programming
languages to 1st semester CS students.  What good does teaching some
pascal do if they can't make use of its structured nature?

I would suggest that students take a class in some sort of analysis,
where they don't have to know much about a specific topic to learn the
methods of problem description and solution.  If you throw this plus
learning a programming language into the same course, are your students
going to learn what you want them to?

brian
-- 
Brian Pinkerton @ wisconsin
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