[Edu-sig] transforming CS at Harvey Mudd

[Jacqueline Wilson]

While the wording of that article invited (your opponent's?) criticism,
Kirby, that thread you shared really got my blood pressure up.

I'm surprised he didn't pull out the "those who can do..." BS. I have some
stereotypes to rant about too. I spent 16 years in corporate America before
choosing to leave because I wasn't learning anything new. They pigeon-hole
you into modular assembly line jobs with the ultimate goal of outsourcing
parts. They preach about how we (as educators) can't possibly know anything
about enterprise level this, or security that, all the while clinging to
their Microsoft centric, layer-burdened systems just because they have too
much money and time invested to let them go. They have legacy apps that
nobody in IT can support, but "Sales" or whoever won't let them die.
They'll virtualize, but they won't go cloud because of "security", yet some
over-productive-anti-social-workaholic domain-, network- or email
administrator can destroy their data in one drama-filled weekend because he
didn't like his raise. They promote their best technical people into
management jobs where all they can create are spreadsheets because there is
no career path otherwise. They punish their big-idea creative types because
they didn't adhere to dress codes, or attend some number of diversity
training sessions...

I'm a teacher (isn't that cute) that happens to have Cisco, MCSE, Citrix
(among other) certifications, experienced in several industries as a
technician, project manager and team manager. From what I've seen
creativity and innovation cannot be dictated through corporate structures
of 8:00-5:00 shifts according to bogus pay scale "bands" or incentives. You
need people who enjoy and excel at what they do and you need to give them
the space to do it. That's why the game changing ideas tend to come from
universities and techies "dabbling" at home. I could go into a long list of
"big tech" companies who have fallen prey to too much corporate structure
and loss of vision (Novell, cough). Your buddy has the nerve to accuse
schools of blunting the edge of hardcore subjects to accommodate
underrepresented groups. What are his company's HR policies? Talk about
coddling. It's ridiculous what you have to go through to dismiss a
non-performing employee. In an education setting, the student fails, and
that's that.

If Python makes CS accessible to more big-picture thinkers and future
visionaries, that's what this country needs... not cowboys who spout off
about what a "real job" is, or is not.

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 12:02 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:28 PM, Mark Engelberg
> <mark.engelberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> < ... >
>
> > I think it's pretty easy to interpret this article as saying that the
> women
> > couldn't hack it until it was replaced with something light and fluffy
> with
> > fewer sharp edges.  Nowhere does it indicate that students are learning
> just
> > as much, or that this change in approach benefits all students, not just
> the
> > women.  Are we elevating the quality of our computer science graduates,
> or
> > just lowering the definition of what that means?  Without addressing
> these
> > questions, I fear this article does more harm than good.
> >
>
> Yes, that's exactly the context in which the article was being cited
> in the thread I got it from:  more evidence of dumbing down.
>
> The implicit assumption is then that Python is watered down pabulum
> while Java is for real non-quiche eating men or something.
>
> I got into sparring with the guy pushing that interpretation.
>
> http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7760263
>
> (there's a tree view of our discussion commenting on the article --
> ongoing)
>
> Kirby
> _______________________________________________
> Edu-sig mailing list
> Edu-sig at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
>



-- 
Jacqueline Wilson
Dept Chair, Information Technology
Padua Academy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/attachments/20120405/4da917f0/attachment.html>