[Edu-sig] Re: Teaching Middle-School Math with Python

[Kirby Urner]

>Scheme will stay around, don't worry. I meant Scheme in middle schools. 
>

Glad to hear it.  But even in this narrow scope, it don't see it
as an either/or proposition.  Schools should continue to evolve 
multiple approaches.  If Python makes more inroads, this is not
necessarily at Scheme's expense.

>I am happy to see that you have read some of our material. But if you had
>read it far enough you would see
>
> - that car and cdr never occur in the book
>

The book I mean is one you wrote, where you have two columns, with 
the answer on the right (you cover it with your hand or a piece of
paper, and answer questions mentally, before sliding the paper down
and checking your answer).  I was pretty sure car and cdr were covered 
in that book.  If not, I'm surprised that memory fails me.  

Also, I'd think you'd _want_ to cover car and cdr when approaching 
programming in Scheme (one reason I provided "emulations" of those 
functions in recent posts -- essentially the same as Python's 
List[0] and List[1:], although of course we're not talking about
proper vs. improper lists as formed from cons pairs (that's an 
abstraction more specific to the LISP family)).

> - that recursion is explained as the control structure that matches data def
>

I recall something about a dog chasing it's own tail, but maybe
that was a different book.

Here's something else from private email (a judgement call, when to 
share more publicly, I realize -- I try to be constructive and keep
the conversation rolling).  This from a teacher at a nearby high school 
(he has a fair amount of programming experience, though not with 
Scheme -- nor any with Python):

   I was hoping that Scheme would be a good intro to other 
   Languages, mainly JAVA.  Since I am moving through the 
   material with the kids, we are all somewhat impatient at 
   having no looping mechanism yet.  I am all for recursion, 
   but not to the exclusion of every type of looping mechanism.  
   Again, I stepped into Scheme blindly, having faith in the 
   promise of the promo.   I'm not ready to quit yet, but 
   I keep getting blindsided as I ask kids to do things that 
   I think are simple, like counting.

This teacher is just using what's freely downloadable from the web 
(from your website).  Although I realize you have workshops, to a 
great extent we simply have to rely on osmosis for these languages 
to filter outward.  In my opinion, learning Scheme requires more 
hand-holding i.e. more trained people such as yourself are required
to back it up and keep the ball rolling.  In the case of Python, my 
expectation is CP4E is more a self-fulfilling prophecy (will require 
less push).  Python is a snowball, or, like Tim Berners-Lee talks 
about the World Wide Web: a bobsled you need to push only in the 
beginning -- then you jump on and try steer (what he's been doing 
at W3C).

> - that models and views are radically separated so that middle school kids 
>   don't have to bother with mind-numbing memorizations about view (i/o)
>   stuff. Otherwise we're like biology. 
>

My "math through programming" approach is to build on terminology already 
evolved in ordinary math classes.  I personally like talking about models
and views and would like to see more of this phased in.  

In the meantime, what we already teach about are functions, relations, 
compositions of functions, domain, range, sets, intersection, union... the 
standard math topics, found in most text books the last 10-15 years.  

This is what math teachers like to see -- familiar terms.  Neither "model" 
nor "view" is a prevalent term in that knowledge domain (again, I think 
this should change).

>;; --- 
>
>
>  This was more in in response Shririam's feedback, after that positive
>  review of my curriculum writing at the O'Reilly website:[1]
>
>If you cite from private email, I can't comment. That's between him and you.
>
>-- Matthias

If you say so.  When I get a letter from a partner in a law firm,  I get
a clue by looking at the stationery as to whether she speaks for the 
company.  In email world, we don't usually have "letterhead" per se, 
and so the scope (local? more global?) is not always so clear.  Thanks 
for the clarification.

Kirby