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From: chen@gitpyr.UUCP (Ray Chen)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.cse
Subject: Re: teaching computer science
Message-ID: <1496@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 01:57:00 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.1496
Posted: Wed Mar  5 01:57:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Mar-86 04:21:23 EST
References: <204@bu-cs.UUCP> <558@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: The Clouds Project, The School of ICS, Georgia Tech
Lines: 27
Xref: watmath net.college:1185 net.cse:675
Summary: bravo!!

In article <558@hoptoad.uucp>, laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) writes:
> If you walk to your local undergrad csc terminal room, you will find that
> the bulk of people there are not there because they have a personal
> commitment to thinking -- especially about computer science.  They are
> there to get ``job training''.  While I think that there is nothing wrong
> with job training, I don't think that it should be taught *at university*.

I agree.  I consider job training something that is aimed primarly at
providing you with new tools.  How well you use them is up to you and
your native abilities.  A university education should be geared for
something different.  I'm not sure I can express what I want to get
across, but here goes...

I believe in the concept of a "liberal-arts" undergraduate education.
A university education should be aimed exposing people to different
ways of looking at the world.  When you walk out of a physics class, a
philosophy class, or a computer science class, ideally, you should now
have a better idea as to how a physicist, philosopher, or computer
scientist views his world.  As a by-product, you may pick up some
tools in the bargain, but the main gain should be a look at a different
way of thinking.

A university education should be beneficial long after IBM 370 assembler
is obsolete.

	Ray Chen
	gatech!gitpyr!chen