Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.17 $; site uiucdcsb.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcsb!grunwald From: grunwald@uiucdcsb.UUCP Newsgroups: net.college Subject: Re: Re: Computer Science in high school Message-ID: <14700007@uiucdcsb.UUCP> Date: Wed, 2-Jan-85 16:51:00 EST Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.14700007 Posted: Wed Jan 2 16:51:00 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 4-Jan-85 00:21:56 EST References: <753@gloria.UUCP> Lines: 42 Nf-ID: #R:gloria:-75300:uiucdcsb:14700007:000:2224 Nf-From: uiucdcsb!grunwald Jan 2 15:51:00 1985 "Giving the kids computers" when what the kids really want is a video-game is hardly going to solve the problems of the decline of social and intellectual skills in this country. My previous note, quoted by the Col., and his response to it, illustrate much of what I mean. I hope that the responses were tounge-in-cheek, although I doubt that they were. Computer people often commit great acts of hubris by thinking that their media will change the world. However, a world where people can talk to people at the other end of the globe at 10Mhz and yet lack sufficient skills or depth to say anything meaningful -- whatta Utopia! The example I cited, the person adding dimensions to produce area does not illustrate need a computer. Perhaps he could have used one to inspire him to learn about math when he was in school. Perhaps this is true, but that's a far cry from needing to know how to program. However, the main argument reduces to: In a school which has some available resources (money), should these resources be spent on reinforcing and extending basic skills or should they be used to start a program in some new field. Computers in education are tres trendy right now. Knowing how to locate the U.S. on the map is not trendy, and yet something like 20% of sixth graders can not locate their own country on maps. Usually, the maps are made in the U.S. and thus display the nationalistic tendency to have the U.S. be right in the middle. Under their noses. I assume that the school posting the original question has a well balanced program in the humanities. If they don't, they should shunt the money from the technophiles to the other departments to provide some dramatic illustration to the little tykes that the world is a big place and the more you know about all of it (not just machines), the more useful you are to the world and the world to you. Without such a proper education, the person who wishes to harness technology does not have the moral & ethical background to question their own work, nor do they have the broad awareness needed to apply their technological toys to the solution of problems. Which, after all, is one reason technology is developed in the first place.