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.