[Edu-sig] Politics and Python in Education

[Guido van Rossum]

Please stop arguing politics on the list NOW.

I don't want to start actually kicking people or posts off the list,
but I will if it doesn't stop. This is simply not the platform for it.
Find a different platform where this topic are welcome.

--Guido

On 7/18/07, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
> Anna Ravenscroft wrote:
> >> Still, I could essentially see Guido's point, because some conventional
> >> school staff who otherwise like Python may face issues posting to a list
> >> talking about the future of education (which may appear to threaten
> >> their job), so perhaps ultimately a solution would be to have one list
> >> for "python in mainstream education" and another list for "python for
> >> alternative or future education".
> >
> > Or how about one list on "educational politics" and one on python in
> > education. Oh wait - there ARE already lists on educational
> > politics... how about those who want to discuss that, go to those
> > lists and discuss it there?! And use this list to specifically discuss
> > python in education?
>
> I think your analogy (and by extension Guido's strawman proposal) is
> flawed, because a key aspect of *design* is to see how values and
> priorities (which is the core of "politics") lead to new and interesting
> structures for software and content and hardware. In a Python CP4E
> context I see this as including any or all of:
> * changes to Python itself (e.g. "edit and continue" support in the core
> and in IDLE), or
> * new libraries for Python (e.g. PataPata), or
> * new application based on Python (e.g. constructivist educational
> simulations, including perhaps, though he might have disagreed, the late
> Arthur Siegel's PyGeo :-), or
>   http://pygeo.sourceforge.net/index.html
> * new curricula or other smaller educational materials (e.g. the
> Shuttleworth Foundation's steps in that direction), or
> * even new hardware which is Python-powered (e.g. OLPC, or even Lego
> Mindstorms NXT robotics, which I just got two of and was yesterday
> looking up references to using Python to program).
>
> To talk about creating such software or hardware or content without a
> sense of priorities and values would be analogous to going to an
> architect, asking them to design you a custom house and, and then
> saying, "well, you're an architect, just design us something, we are
> busy people and have no time to talk about values or priorities".
> Although I guess even there a clever architect would learn one thing
> about such people's values and priorities. :-)
>
> For a personal example, to show these issues are not just talk, consider
> the literally person-months I spent building the PataPata experiment
>   http://patapata.sourceforge.net/
> to bring some Squeak-like constructivist ideas more directly into a
> Python-powered IDE, and which I discussed on this list. Maybe not a huge
> success, but a big investment of my limited time in the free Python
> realm and I learned a few things from it (including the importance of
> naming objects if you wished to share them, a departure from the "Self"
> prototype programming ideal using unnamed pointers to parent objects).
>   http://patapata.sourceforge.net/critique.html
> Ultimately, PataPata was of very marginal interest here. Other people
> can talk about how Squeak has ideas that might work in Python, but when
> things got going, the talk was just talk. Ideally, from my point of
> view, people here would have discussed how these priorities and values
> of learned-centered technologies such as PataPata was a step towards
> could be translated into even more Python-related software, stuff beyond
> PataPata and even better. People could go beyond what I reference, and
> go beyond my own self critique, and as experienced educators suggest
> even better ideas for new technology related to Python (e.g. "the
> students are always saying if only we had X Y or Z for Python they'd be
> using it so much more for the things they want to do" -- like the
> reasons a homeschooled kid chose "DarkBasic" instead of Python, as
> mentioned on the Math Forum Kirby posts to).
>   http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=5812048&tstart=0
>
> But that doesn't happen here much, in large part I'd speculate since
> most educators here are teachers, and the authoritarian context most
> teachers work in is unfortunately very limiting both as to free time and
> as to possible horizons, at least in the USA. Again, for example,
> consider my relative who could be fired if she installed Python on her
> classroom computer, and who would not have enough free time to go
> through the bureaucratic hoops to get Python installed district wide,
> let alone then have time to learn how to use it).
>
> That all to me is tremendously disappointing, especially as:
>   CP4E != CP4MainstreamSchools
> in my thinking (even if mainstream schools are part of "Everyone").
>
> It's no big surprise the US military (of all US institutions including
> the Department of Education) initially funded CP4E, because, in the USA,
> historically the military has had the most difficulties dealing with
> lack of education among recruits, see for example:
>   http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm
> """Back in 1952 the Army quietly began hiring hundreds of psychologists
> to find out how 600,000 high school graduates had successfully faked
> illiteracy. Regna Wood sums up the episode this way: "After the
> psychologists told the officers that the graduates weren't faking,
> Defense Department administrators knew that something terrible had
> happened in grade school reading instruction. And they knew it had
> started in the thirties. Why they remained silent, no one knows. The
> switch back to reading instruction that worked for everyone should have
> been made then. But it wasn't.""""
>
> Doesn't that sound a bit like future echoes of "Why Johnny Can't Code"?
>   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Why+Johnny+Can%27t+Code
>   http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/09/14/basic/index_np.html
>   http://news.com.com/Why+Johnny+cant+code/2010-1071_3-5596882.html
>   http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/14/0320238
> It is another example of how, ironically, the US military is perhaps the
> only well supported large institution in the USA who, as with
> illiteracy, needs to wrestle with the consequences of US educational
> problems on a large scale. Gatto suggests, unlike the military, most of
> the other US institutions actually grow in power the more dysfunctional
> citizens are, so educational failure isn't a problem for them;
> illiterate graduates are paradoxically a great thing for, say, a
> department of education's budget -- justifying, in an unexamined way,
> more money to do more of the same.
>
> People on this list (including Guido) sound disappointed in me for
> talking educational politics, but as I reflect on it, I am disappointed
> with people on this list for not helping more directly translate the
> values and priorities I reference into even more Python-related options
> for the future of most education. That future will IMHO emphasize
> learner-centered and learner-customized on-demand activities which
> empower the user to do amazing things either alone or as part of amazing
> ad hoc groups like a typical open source or free software projects,
> including Python. And that disappointment is even keener because I have
> little doubt the educators on the edusig list are generally some of the
> most progressive ones around (otherwise, people her would be on a Java
> list or teaching about using Visual Basic to script Office).
>
> I can acknowledge that to the extent edusig is about being a teachers'
> lounge where teachers compare notes about teaching Python to meet
> state-defined objectives to pass standardized tests, such discussions
> seem off-topic. But as I said before, if that is the concern, Java is
> really the answer (in the USA, based on AP credit as someone else
> mentioned; granted other countries will differ). Once we wander off that
> path of standardization, then lots of issues relating to values and
> priorities show up -- especially if, like me, you are interested in
> making new things related to Python and education.
>
> --Paul Fernhout
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)