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From: welte@sybil.cs.Buffalo.EDU (Martha Welte)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Programming instead of math
Message-ID: <49047@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 4 Dec 90 15:12:05 GMT
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The name of the English course that includes word processing should
be Ninth Grade Composition.  Teaching word processing sufficiently
to write papers should require no more than 3 class periods, plus
two minutes a week to introduce any new wrinkles, such as underlining
for bibliographies.  The name of the course should focus attention
on its purpose.  I have taught my own children word processing and
have taught college students word processing (no, I don't think
that computer literacy should carry college credit, but it did
where I was teaching.  Not math credit, however.), so I know
that both younger and older people than those you are teaching can learn 
basic word processing in three hours.
     As to where the schools (or perhaps parents or this culture)
are failing: 25% of the freshmen entering the 4-year college where
I taught couldn't do ninth grade algebra.  And half of those couldn't
learn it in a one-semester remedial course.  They could neither
distinguish a sentence from a non-sentence, nor write two sentences
in a row without grammar errors.
     What shocked me even more was the number of students who had
never been made to take ninth grade algebra.  Even those who say
that they are not going to college should have to take and pass
algebra to get a high school diploma.  This is clearly a failure
of the high schools.  If no standards are set, none will be met.


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