[Edu-sig] College Board Cuts CS AP

[kirby urner]

Interesting:

"""
The courses being cut -- Italian, Latin literature, French literature and
computer science AB -- are among the least popular in the AP portfolio.
"""

Consider in light of presentations by Robert Lefkowitz (OSCON etc.)
re programming as part of the new rhetoric of the 21st century (the
logical part, subsumes boolean, becomes the lingua franca for sharing
anticipatory "what if" models (simulations), just as the I Ching
influenced Leibniz suggested might happen (Ada too).

Looking back, we just needed to get over Artificial Intelligence ("AI"),
the bogus dogma that human intelligence needed to be superseded
by supercomputers.

Vannevar Bush's MEMEX in reality turned out to be a cell-silicon hybrid,
not just Google-the-hardware (i.e. the networking effects of individual
humans remains critical, and not just to advertisers).

Anyway, I'm happy to see the old order crumbling, giving us some
more breathing room, a chance to start over from scratch in some
ways.

Portland public schools are even now forging new alliances with
state academies, AP or no AP (AP is out of ETS in New Jersey
right?).

Plus now that some of us are phasing in programming as a
standard math lab activity, it's hardly necessary to keep this
older approach to college prep alive.

Kids will be learning Python simply as a consequence of needing
to learn math concepts -- in some schools (we're not mandating,
just noting we already have that freedom under state law, in Alaska
too).

Related blog post:
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/04/national-standards.html

Kirby

On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Vern Ceder <vceder at canterburyschool.org> wrote:
> The link as it came through on the list was broken - you need to add the
> second line to finish it...
>
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/03/ST2008040303977.html
>
>  (Let's see if this one makes it through in one piece - if not reassemble
> manually. )
>
>  Vern