[Edu-sig] Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #205 - 8 msgs

[Richard J Panek Jr]

On Mon, 8 Jan 2001 07:41:51 -0600, Dorothea Salo  wrote:

>  Er, please insert a polite way of saying "bovine excrement"=
 here.

Thank you for being polite :-)

>  Have you ever actually taken a music theory class? It's all *
>about*
>problem-solving. Here's a figured-bass line and a starting=
 chord.
>Write the
>rest of the chords. Here's a chord progression and a starting=
 chord.
>Write
>the rest. Here's a piece of music. What's the chord=
 progression?
>Oops, key
>change -- where's the pivot chord, and how does it fit into=
 both
>keys?


You're right- I've never taken a music theory class.  I was=
 thinking 
more of the 'everybody' level, and while I acknowledge that I=
 know 
very little about music, I have gone through school, college,=
 etc. 
and thus believe I have a good idea of what is taught on a=
 general 
level, and programming would be hard to incorporate into the=
 limited 
curriculum that I was exposed to.  

>
>  Back when I was taking music theory in college, we used to
>practice
>these things on HyperCard stacks. Really. Would've been way=
 cooler
>to be
>able to program 'em ourselves.
>

I'm pretty sure I'm missing something here, but using HyperCard=
 to 
present practice problems is a lot different from writing a=
 program 
to solve the problems.  Or did the stacks solve the problems 
themselves?   

>  Depends on how you approach it. A lot of serious language=
 study
>is precisely about figuring out how ambiguity and 
>context-sensitivity work.
>(Same for text markup, which may be of slightly more interest to=
 the
>tech-heads here.) If you approach natural language as an=
 icky-nasty
>horrible thing that should be gotten out of the way as quickly=
 as 
>possible so that
>the real work can take place -- which is, I hope I need not=
 say,
>exactly the
>approach to mathematics that rightly annoys so many people here=
 --
>then of course the task of problem solving is harder; you're=
 making 
>it harder because of your attitude toward it.
>
>  If, however, you approach natural language with an awareness=
 of
>its
>beauty, variety, and power of fascination, there's no reason on
>earth that
>computers can't fit nicely into the picture. Just like math.

I understand that natural language is a wonderful thing, and a=
 lot of 
the interesting stuff in CS is closely related to language.  I=
 just 
think that it would be a hard way to teach programming and still=
 
teach language concepts at the same time.  Can writing a program=
 give 
greater appreciation for a work of literature?  Maybe it can, and=
 I 
would love to see some examples.  With math, however, programming=
 can 
uncover things that would otherwise go unnoticed, and the=
 programming 
is relatively simple.  

Of course math is not the only possible way, but it's probably=
 the 
most likely way. Other subjects would require a pretty extensive=
 
re-evaluation of current curricula and teaching methods.  Of=
 course, 
I think most subjects require that anyway so maybe incorporating=
 
computers would be one way to do it.

>
>Dorothea
>--
>Dorothea Salo
>Impressions Book and Journal Services, Inc.
>phone: (608) 244-6218  fax: (608) 244-7050
>http://www.impressions.com
>
>
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-- Richard J Panek Jr, rpanek@mitre.org on 01/08/2001