Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: In defence of the K-12 school system
Message-ID: <3596@killer.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 88 01:36:18 GMT
References: <3435@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 54

in article <3435@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>, tlh@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas L. Hausmann) says:
> In article <3560@killer.UUCP>, elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes:
>> matter how much we pay our engineers. Reason: most people who graduate from
>> high school can barely add, much less do the sort of mathematics required for
>> success in a technical field. Walk into a freshman CS class at a
>> middle-echelon state university. Count the students. Divide by 10. That's how
>> many will remain, after the rest fail Calculus four times.
> 
> Eric perhaps s t r e t c h e s things a bit but he is essentially correct.
> At my undergraduate institution, most CS students washed out because of poor
> reasoning skills and mathematical abilities.  (Almost) every class I took for
> the first two years (excluding Intro Psych, Intro Soc, [no digs intended, 
> even Soc majors say intro Soc is a trivial class.]) about one third of the 
> students failed outright.  These are courses like Calc I-III, Physics I-III,
> and beginning CS courses.
> 
> For most of us reading comp.edu we are well aware of this problem.  What we
> could be searching for is a solution or at least some ideas for change.

About stretching: Note that Purdue is not a public-supported state university,
and is not under court order to accept anybody who walks through the doors.
Out of 400 freshmen who declare their major as Computer Science, 40 is a
reasonable number to expect to graduate at the large public university that I
attended. Note, however, that probably 150 or more of those change their major
to "soft" subjects such as business administration, communications, etc.  The
other big kicker, besides mathematical abilities, was reasoning skills. Even
the robot metaphor (Karel & friends) wouldn't help some of the people that I
saw. Even the "giving house directions" metaphor didn't work, sometimes. If
some of those people had been giving me directions on how to get to their
house, I would have ended up in Mamou (a fate worse than nowhere!).

Sometimes I think Mssrs Pournelle and Niven were right ("Evolution reverses
with the onset of civilization"). Bad enough that we're all becoming blind as
bats, and a huge percentage of the population explodes in sneezing fits near
ragweed. At which point images arise of the typical citizen of the year 2600,
complete with seeing-eye dog and respirator mask.  But is our collective IQ
heading for the cellar, too?

But other times, I'm more optimistic. "Just poor education". At which the
educational establishment howls, but.... if you look at it from my viewpoint
("concerned citizen & parent"), "We give them more money than they got 50
years ago, more training, better tools, and what results did we get?" If I
hire someone to dig a well, I expect them to do it. I don't expect them to
moan and groan because the field isn't level and the going's a little rocky
and so on and so forth. They're there to do a job. If they don't, out the door
they go, and don't expect a paycheck. When I hear teacher groups moaning and
groaning about those same unlevel fields and rocky strata (lack of societal
support for education, the breakup of the family structure, etc.), as an
excuse for not doing the job that we the people hired them for, I tend to have
the same knee-jerk response.  

--
Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET    Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191        
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg        Lafayette, LA 70509