On Sep 29, 2005, at 11:35 PM, R Charles Flickinger wrote:
Hi Norman
I started with 900+ first year comp sci folks and when we finally
graduated (all 94 of us) there were 3 women
None of them are currently working in the field any more
Jeez, that doesn't make learning this stuff as a profession seem
attractive at all. :(
first day of the first class the prof says "Look to your left. Look
to your right. Two of the three of you will not be here by the end
of the year"
He was darn close
And THAT is a failure of the teaching by and large. Having taught
programming to English majors, applications to HS dropouts, and basic
math to people who insisted they were too dumb to learn arithmetic,
the teaching matters. I'm a smart person, but I failed Dynamics (the
physics of moving things) TWICE before I got it on the third try. The
difference the third time was the teacher. A good teacher takes
responsibility for actually teaching such that even a student who
DOESN'T get it right off can understand. By and large, college
professors drop this ball.
I saw it as a tutor. We had a student who had come out of someplace
fairly primitive in Africa. He had never even SEEN a computer. He
didn't know how to turn one on, or type, or even start a program. He
also didn't know how to use the telephone. They dropped him in a
programming class and he struggled. He leaned hard on the other
students and the tutors until we were all crazy. He cobbled together
snippets of code that kind of worked. But he was sinking, not
swimming.
It was brought up at the tutor's meeting and the attitude of the
professors was "so?" I remember saying something like, "SOMEONE has
to do something. This kid is smart and he's working his behind off
and he's still drowning and it's not right to just LET him fail."
(Did I mention being mouthy even back then?) The professors didn't
think they had any responsibility to help this kid succeed instead of
fail, but it seemed to wake them up. The kid got remediation and it
made a big difference for him. But up to the point when a lowly tutor
reminded them that they should do the right thing, they seemed
content to take someone's money and not actually see that he learns
even when he's really working at it.
You can teach almost anyone to program, but good teaching is key.
dej
--
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I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always stop when
there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let
it refill at night from the springs that fed it.--Ernest Hemingway
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"In the midst of winter, I finally realized that deep within me there
lay an invincible summer."--Albert Camus
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2001-2003 Golden Pen "Most Outspoken" I am Writer, hear me Pontificate!
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