Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!purdue!tlh From: tlh@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas L. Hausmann) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: In defence of the K-12 school system Message-ID: <3445@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 7 Mar 88 03:57:24 GMT References: <3435@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <3596@killer.UUCP> Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 92 Summary: Clarification (response to Eric) In article <3596@killer.UUCP>, elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) writes: > 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. Purdue *is* a public university (in West Lafayette, Indiana.) A Hoosier grad student (read native to Indiana) who picked up his degree last year told me that it is Indiana law that any Indiana high school graduate be admitted to either IU or Purdue if they apply. Disclaimer: this sounds unlikely to me, every university has minimum standards. When I related my above experiences, Eric, I specifically referred to my undergraduate institution. You may recall (from last years personal correspondence with you) this was a reasonably selective public liberal arts school in Minnesota. I have no problems with students washing out of any program, that is the way the system works. In fact, my experience is that about 10 percent made it (like you.) However, if I am not mistaken there has been some article about "Predicting the Success of Freshmen CS Students" in a CACM within the last two(?) years. The data collected (hence the conclusions drawn) may be a bit dated now (I'll explain below) but that will give us a basis to discuss from OTHER than our own un-verifiable thumb-nail guesses. [I say that the data is dated because it is from time before CS courses became established in Minnesota high schools and I am extrapolating to include Indiana, where the data for the report was collected (I think). When you read the report, you will see that the numbers today, may be different.] > [Some of Eric's stuff deleted] > 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? No. > But other times, I'm more optimistic. Good. > "Just poor education". High attrition rates are related mostly to misconceptions about what is required of people in a given discipline. >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?" > ... > 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. To say it is entirely the teachers fault that children are not learning oversimplifies the problem. > Eric Lee Green elg@usl.CSNET Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 > {cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg Lafayette, LA 70509 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Hausmann R.A. Dept. of Computer Sciences Purdue University tlh@mordred.cs.purdue.edu | My ideas? There has never been an original ...!purdue!tlh | thought since Plato.