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From: eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.cse
Subject: Re: Should Computer Science be taught at the High School level?
Message-ID: <705@ames.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Dec-84 16:39:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.705
Posted: Sat Dec 15 16:39:03 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Dec-84 03:47:52 EST
References: <241@mss.UUCP>
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Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
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Xref: watmath net.college:525 net.cse:258

> 
> My question to the net readership is what should the content of a required
> course be?  If you are a college educator, what information do you want
> incoming Freshmen to possess regarding computers?  Not just students in CS
> but *all* of your incoming students.  Do potential English majors really
> gain something by learning how to code Pascal?  Or would they be better
> served learning word-processing and spread sheets?

Pasadena throws an excellent doo dah parade.


This question can be extrapolated to experience I had after taking Calculus
in HS and having it again in college.  There is going to be some degree
of repetition in anything you teach them.  The skill they need in no
particular order (except #1) are:

1) communication skills {English and perhaps one foreign language} are
	important.  I would also like to include thinking logically
2) some discrete math
3) exposure to interaction, I/O, modularity, parallelism
4) exposure to structuring ideas and data
5) exposure to data communications
6) computing ethics [in light of recent developments]
7) an undertanding that many vastly different languages and systems
	exist, and that computing is becoming a multi-lingual affair

English majors would best be served learning word processing and things like
the Writer's Work Bench.  But they need more.

This brings up the subject of tools.  Compiled programming languages are
poor learning tools at best.  BASIC continues to be popular despite
comments by people "in the know."  I think Unix shell programming has
the answer to a point.  While travelling on airlines, you might see some
little electronics kits for the bored passenger.  You plug in modules
and make a radio, key set, door buzzer, mini-Cray-1, or whatever.
What is needed is a software kit like this to teach the basic of
computing.  It should not be a single monolith package [the `Duff criterion,'
I just came from the Usenix graphics workshop], but a collection of small
tools...(haven't we heard this before).

There is a woman who was in charge of the 1984 ACM meeting who lead the
fight against the Apple bill.  She and her colleagues reasoned that the
general quality of educational software was extremely poor.  Computer
literacy (she said) is not knowing a programming language or word processor.
You might get in touch with her:
	Karen Duncan
	15 Parsons Way
	Los Altos, CA zip???
She has some very good ideas and might be able to help you.

--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Research Center
  {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,vortex}!ames!aurora!eugene
  emiya@ames-vmsb.ARPA