[Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question

[Andy Judkis]

I've just completed my 6th semester as a teacher, teaching 2 sections per 
semester of a 10th grade course that includes a 4 week introduction to 
programming in Python.  Here's a question from one of my exams:



    Write Python code that will ask the user how who is the best looking 
teacher in the school.  The program must loop until the user responds either 
"Mrs. McGrath" or "Mr. Judkis".  If the use responds "Mr. Judkis", the 
program must print out "Excellent choice."  If the user responds "Mrs. 
McGrath", the program must print out "Also a fine choice."  If the user 
responds with anything else, the program must print out "Wrong, sorry." and 
ask again.



Rather than catalog my frustrations, let me just pose a question to you 
all -- how much Python exposure do you think it should take before a student 
should be able to answer this question?  If a student can't even answer 
this, is it reasonable to say that they have learned any programming at all? 
(I know that they might have learned something -about- programming, but that 
is not the same thing.)



Thanks,



Andy Judkis



(By the way, anybody out there going to be at CS4HS next week at CMU?  If so 
I'd love to get together with you . . )