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From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Resources and education
Message-ID: <852@killer.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-May-87 02:17:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.852
Posted: Wed May  6 02:17:49 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 10-May-87 11:44:55 EDT
References: <1345@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>
Organization: The Unix(tm) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 42

Sorry about the high flammables content of my last posting... disdvantage of
doing all my netreading/netposting after midnight (I tend to get a bit giddy
around 2am :-). 

Points:

1) You are not going to teach a person how to think by denying him access to
necessary resources. I believe this was one of the justifications used in the
past for denial of computer resources to CS students: "If they have to
scribble it down in pencil and paper and then type it onto punch cards,
they'll have to think about the problem more."

2) Your typical teen-age hacker type can knock down quicksorts all day long
without pausing for breath, much less having to think. Telling him to not run
to the library isn't going to make any difference. You are not going to teach
innovation or "how to think" in a lower level CS class. Many students will
memorize solutions. The hacker folk don't need to memorize solutions. In any
event, almost nobody will listen to a darn thing said in early "program
design" or "data structures" or "structured programming" classes until they
tackle their first real project.... something that they CAN'T look up in a
book, and that all the memorization and parroting in the world won't help. And
something where the hacker's hackerisms turn grotesque, unwieldy, and
transparent.

For example, if you really want to see a bunch of kids a'frenzied, tell them
to write an EGREP program, and point them towards various books about discrete
math, formal languages, and parsing. Next, ask them to explain what they've
done, as formally as possible :-). You'll see'em doodling transition diagrams
on the backs of napkins while they're eating for the next month. To be fair,
though, that's really something for upperclassmen who'd have the necessary
mathematical background...

If a student types in a program out of a book, that's obviously "cheating".
However, when used properly, a book can help a student understand the
reasonings and principles behind a solution. Is not that understanding, a
step toward the road of actually being able to independently develop such
solutions?  
--
Eric Green   elg%usl.CSNET     CS student, University of SW Louisiana
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg      Apprentice Haquer, Bayou Telecommunications
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191      BBS phone #: 318-984-3854  300/1200 baud
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