[Edu-sig] The fate of raw_input() in Python 3000

[Arthur]

kirby urner wrote:

>
>import math
>math.cos( 90 * math.degrees)
>
>-- that's what a first class might include.  If what stops 'em isn't
>the Python syntax, but the trig, then we go over the trig.  Basic
>numeracy.  All as a bundle.  Not your grandfathers math class (but
>some hoped it'd be for their kids -- remember when the future was,
>well, futuristic?).
>  
>
How you manage to tangle your sensible and salable ideas into a 
rhetorical jumble that makes them sound a lot more dazed, dazzling,  
and  unsaleable they then are on their merits - confounds me.

I am convinced that the problem is that you have engaged the wrong 
enemy.  It is not the school board of Hodunk, Missouri..Talked to with 
respect for your joint mission of the welfare of their charges, and your 
sensible ideas presented without your form of  Princetonian arrogance - 
I see a team.

Your problem is the radical constructivists.  You believe in *typing*, 
you talk about *mathematical ideas* - trigonometry, even - rather than 
"analytical skills", which of course means everything and nothing at the 
same time.

They are better funded.  You cannot afford your arrogance if you are at 
all serious about competing.  But then I don't believe you are actually 
trying to win.  Would take a kind of discipline that you exhibit does 
not interest you. 

Just getting your rocks off?

Art