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From: woof@psivax.UUCP (Harold Schloss)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.cse
Subject: Re: Should Computer Science be taught at the High School level?
Message-ID: <210@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 13:27:18 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.210
Posted: Wed Dec 19 13:27:18 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 07:42:54 EST
References: <241@mss.UUCP> <705@ames.UUCP> <44@rti-sel.UUCP>
Reply-To: woof@psivax.UUCP (Harold Schloss)
Distribution: net
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 39
Xref: watmath net.college:561 net.cse:275
Summary: 

It would seem to me that most high school students would be easily taught
enough about a computer to be educated users. By this I mean, they would
know about storage devices (floppies) and the need for backing them up.
They would know the rudiments of some operating system. They would know
enough to write a program in some language that printed to the screen or
other output device, got input from the user, had a subroutine, and at
least one loop. (This is loosely based on the Harvard College requirements
for all undergraduates.) To be really complete they could learn about recursion.

The language that is used to teach this doesn't seem to me to be a very
important issue. It should be (in my opinion) a language that does not
require the teacher to get really bogged down in teaching some unique
method of programming. Languages I feel might be appropriate are BASIC,
PASCAL, C, and similar types of languages. I don't feel that LISP or
PROLOG are good vehicles for learning computer programming initially.
They are not relevant to most programming environments I have encountered
so far. They are efficient for the tasks they were designed I'm sure, but
it seems to me that they are somewhat difficult for someone's first language.
(I'm aware that other people hold strong opinions on the subject that may
differ, so try not to flame me too much.)

My first experience with computers came with a class taught in the
afternoons at the local high school as part of California's Mentally
Gifted Minors program. I was in the sixth grade at the time and we were
taught a rudimentary form of assembly language on an old Litton computer.
(It even had a drum memory!) As I remember there was very little in the
way of an age barrier to understanding the computer, but I will admit
the class was self selected. The group of kids involved obviously had
some interest in the subject already though. It would have been nice
to have taught a high level language, but it took an hour to load
FORTRAN 2 off the paper tape so we made do (quite well) with the built
in assembly language. I think that we would have learned just as much
if we had been taught the same subject matter in the 3rd grade.


-- 
		Hal Schloss
		(from the Software Lounge at) Pacesetter Systems Inc.
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