🚀 go-pugleaf

   From: bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)
   My concern is that the whole idea of curriculum gets in the way of 
   learning.  

While there are certainly bad curriculums and bad implementations of
them, this should not rule out the possibility of a good
implementation of a good curriculum.  In other words, a curriculum
does not necessarily get in the way of learning, though it often may.

I think that the idea of "imposing" a curriculum on students is
reflects the wrong attitude.  Rather, there should be incentives and
challenges to channel the natural energy of students in the direction
towards the curriculm goals.

   If a teacher walks into class with the idea that today everyone is going to
   learn the TTTT, that doesn't feel very "Logo-like" to me.  

But it could be done in a Logo-like fashion if the students were led
(in such a way that they didn't know they were being led) to discover
the TTTT themselves.  Giving kids Logo by itself may be sufficient for
some, but others might needs some occasional hints to move them in the
"right" direction.

   Max's argument that it isn't really so hard.  But for the sake of argument,
   let's suppose we think it is hard.)

Hard things can be made simple, and simple things can be made hard.
But once solved, most problems appear simple.  So it seems obvious to
me that the way to teach is to make things appear as simple as they
are.  This may require first developing a simple framework from which
more complex things can be simply built.

   At one point I asked about kids hanging out in the lab after school,
   and the teacher proudly (!!) replied that no, kids used to hang out in
   the lab, but since they started teaching Computer Science the kids
   have learned that programming is unimportant in itself and merely a
   means to the end of learning Computer Science.  Gack!

Double Gack!!  This teacher's attitude is deplorable and I hope it is
not too wide spread.  If it is, that might partly explain the
deplorable state of our education system.  All the things I really
learned (and remember) I learned on my own because it was fun.

Dan LaLiberte
liberte@cs.uiuc.edu
(Join the League for Programming Freedom: league@prep.ai.mit.edu)
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
		-- Vice President Dan Quayle."