Teaching python (programming) to children

[Cliff Wells]

On Tuesday 13 November 2001 01:25, you wrote:
> Unless I am misunderstanding this terribly,  Cliff Wells, whose
> educational experiences were so dreadful that he nearly dropped out
> of school and had to be rescued by a heroic mathematician teacher,
> wants to base social policy on granting teachers  enough personal
> freedom that they can circumvent the evil policies crafted by
> powerful academic elites that are both so incompetant that they
> mandate evil or foolishness, and so corrupt or stupid that they will not
> change when you point this out to them.  I think that this is what
> I just heard.

Well, that would be horribly oversimplifying it, but yes.  One of the big 
differences between my high school experience and my college experience is 
that the college instructors /had/ the freedom to design a curriculum, and 
more importantly, some of them were even experts in their field.  Contrast 
this with high school where the teachers followed a preset curriculum and 
most likely all had degrees in education rather than the subject they were 
teaching (and where the classes were so geared to the LCD that I never did 
homework and barely listened and still got A's on my tests - hm, why would 
that be boring?).  This is the system you appear to be advocating (correct me 
if I'm wrong - I can handle it ;-).  Of course you will respond with shock 
and horror, but it's a rare case when a committee delegating anything 
achieves anything more than utter mediocrity.

I'm curious why you chose to respond to that particular part of my post and 
disregarded the rest, which IMHO, has more relevance to the discussion at 
hand.


-- 
Cliff Wells
Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308
(800) 735-0555 x308