Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!qucis!dalamb
From: dalamb@qucis.queensu.CA (David Lamb)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: CS education
Message-ID: <487@qusuntrc.queensu.CA>
Date: 20 Dec 89 13:20:44 GMT
References: <479@intelisc.nosun.UUCP> <7474@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Reply-To: dalamb@qucis.queensu.CA (David Lamb)
Organization: Queen's University, Kingston Ontario
Lines: 33

In article <7474@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>   And leading to low efficiency in the educational system; by making
>   education truly free, in the sense that one can pursue education
>   according to one's own interests (limited only by the need to satisfy
>   an absolutely minimal set of prerequisites), we would see a tremendous
>   increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of education.
Uh, who gets to decide what's "minimum"?  I bet a lot of people who set
up the programs you complain about thought their prerequisites *were*
minimal - even, perhaps, less than minimal (that is, inadequate).
>
>   But surely (heavy sarcasm) this could not compare with the thrill
>   of force-feeding irrelevant material to a captive audience which
>   really doesn't give a damn, right??? 
I have never met a teacher who got thrills from force-feeding "irrelevant"
material.  I have met many who disagreed with their students about what
was relevant.  Sometimes the students may have been right, but sometimes
"irrelevant" may be a codeword for "poorly taught" or "too hard" or,
perhaps, "won't help me get my first job".

Students who take responsibility for their own educations usually do a
lot better than those who don't.  We ought to think about getting rid
of things in existing programs that make it hard for a student to do
this, and it's worth examining curricula from this perspective.
However, I suspect that large class sizes and the modern tendency to
pile on a heavy assignment load during the term is a bigger part of the
problem than curriculum requirements.  Even the well-motivated students
have too little flexibility and time to pursue education on their own.

David Alex Lamb			ARPA Internet:	David.Lamb@cs.cmu.edu
Department of Computing				dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca
    and Information Science	uucp:   	...!utzoo!utcsri!qucis!dalamb
Queen's University		phone:		(613) 545-6067
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6