Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!sce!karam
From: karam@sce.carleton.ca (Gerald Karam)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: CS education
Summary: send them to a diploma school
Message-ID: <701@sce.carleton.ca>
Date: 9 Nov 89 12:44:59 GMT
References: <11064@cbnews.ATT.COM> <6961@hubcap.clemson.edu> <3152@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1989Nov7.205549.19821@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>
Reply-To: karam@sce.UUCP (Gerald Karam)
Organization: Systems Eng., Carleton Univ., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 24

In article <1989Nov7.205549.19821@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> ian@theory.cs.psu.edu (Ian Parberry) writes:
>... I see a lot of undergraduate students who resent being
>taught Problem Solving.  I had a student in my office last month who said
>that he was going to work for IBM, and that he didn't need anything that we
>had taught him.  He claimed that Problem Solving is too academic.  Apparently
>all he thinks he needs is skill in the syntax of a programming language or 
>two. A startlingly large number of undergraduates here at Penn State think 
>that theoretical Computer Science is B***S***.
>
>You can lead a student to knowledge, but you can't make him think.

a colleague of mine had a clever response to a first year (freshperson)
engineering student who complained that understanding why things were done 
(in a first "problem solving with computers" course) was getting
in the way of the nuts and bolts (syntax of pascal etc.). since it was at
the beginning of term, the prof. said, "If you hurry, you can probably
get your money back and go and register at (name of local diploma school
deleted) instead!" I believe the student got the point.

gerald karam
asst. professor

karam@sce.carleton.ca
karam@sce.uucp