[Edu-sig] Re: [Tutor] help ;-)

[Danny Yoo]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, dman wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 09:56:10AM -0700, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
> | if this list would block any mail whose subject matched r'^\s*help\s*$'?
> | 
> | Please boys and girls tells us what you need.  'I dont understand
> | classes', 'why is python dying', 'help me with my homework because I
> | am lazy and just go to school to get a degree to go out and make
> | money'.  Whatever, just give us something to go on.
> 
> Yeah, I usually ignore messages that just say "help" because I don't
> have time to read everything.  It the subject doesn't appear
> interesting and/or something I know about, I tend to ignore it.


[Warning: My post is a personal rant, and has little to do with
programming in Python.]


Yikes.  This is starting to sound like something out of ESR's "How to ask
Questions the Smart Way" FAQ:

    http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

It is sometimes a little demoralizing if we get questions that seem to beg
for an answer without showing any effort at trying things out.


But it is not unexpected:  In the culture of education and knowledge, I
feel there's an unhealthy tendency to emphasize "The Answer" at the
expense of ignoring what motions or Process that people make toward a
goal.  Math drills do this.  Multiple choice questions do this.  The SAT
does this.

And game shows do this all the time.  People in Jeopardy are considered
geniuses if they can spit out "questions" at the chime of a buzzer, but
that's still, in essence, just another Answer that's disconnected from any
real understanding.  Perhaps those contestants really do know the ideas
behind the facts, or perhaps they're just parroting what they remembered
from flash cards.  How can one tell?  Given a large enough database of
facts, perhaps a Python dictionary could outperform Alex Trebek.

It's my opinion that the educational culture in the United States does
real damage to people by not encouraging people encogh to practicing the
Process of discovering things.  I feel that, instead, schools encourage
the impulse to depend on others for an answer, without asking how or why
that answer makes sense with what we already know.  It's the path of least
friction: it's just easier to lure the "teacher" to give an answer, rather
than to discover it for oneself.  This feeling seems echoed by John Holt's
book, "How Children Fail", but perhaps I'm misinterpreting his words.



How does this relate back to programming?  I believe computer programming
can help make Process important again.  What makes programming so much
different from other "intellectual" things that people can try out is that
Process really does matter.  One can't get good at programming without
building models of what's going on, or without knowing how to ask good
questions.

When I learned programming, few teachers really knew how to program --- I
couldn't depend on my teachers for an Answer, although I could ask them
for suggestions on resources that could help me.  Nor could I depend
solely on reading books, because it was unlikely I could copy an exact
answer in the back.

But I could combine what I read about books, try interactive experiments
with the computer, and try to build some sort of model that would solve
what I was looking for.  Programming made creativity and invention
important again. And even if I couldn't figure out how exactly to solve a
problem, I learned how to make things less confusing for myself.

I have to admit, though, that I was a little lonely, not to be able to
talk to other people about this crazy stuff about circular linked lists or
binary arithmetic.

I'd better tie this rant somehow with what was discussed earlier...

> | Please boys and girls tells us what you need.  'I dont understand
> | classes', 'why is python dying', 'help me with my homework because I
> | am lazy and just go to school to get a degree to go out and make
> | money'.  Whatever, just give us something to go on.

I agree that it would be nice if people put more effort in, but I think
that this was a little rough.  Quite a few people who are on Tutor are new
at this "programming" sort of thing.  Programming is different, alien, and
unfamiliar enough that I think some liberties should be given to people
who have just started something new.  It takes time to break out bad
habits, but the fact that people are actually talking to us, complete
strangers, about things that aren't part of a standard school curriculum
(yet), is a step in the right direction.

Let's try to make sure people know that they are welcome here, and that we
will do what we can to make it less intimidating.