[Edu-sig] setting the stage (short essay)

[kirby urner]

At my upcoming workshop in Chicago I'm planning to
stress the relevance of theater as *the* extended metaphor
where scripting and browsing is concerned.  JavaScript
pulls the the strings of our DOM, the scenery or structure
of the web page stage, while Servers are even further
behind the scenes than backstage.  They're remote, in
the cloud, and help with keeping the AJAX goin', with
JSON.

The fact that theater is ancient Greek and that we use words
like "ajax" and "jason" is no accident.  And this is where the
mythical roots around Python come in, the familiar serpent
and/or dragon atop a treasure trove, the database (say Oracle)
in modern verbiage.  Hobbits know this archtype, but then so
did the ancient Greeks.

Apollo actually attacks the Python in one chapter, chasing it
away from Delphi, presumably to impose his dreary patriarchy
in opposition to Athena's and her priestesses'.  One would
expect some Athena fan club to claim said Python as a
mascot and even say it never died (such things are eternal
dontcha know).  I have evidence of such a cult.

I should explain that the Python is believed to have lived in
a cave under the temple at Delphi, the place you go for
advice from the priestesses.  Here's a scholarly passage:

http://bit.ly/17i3akK  (goes to Google books, probably *too*
scholarly but what I could find at the moment, confirms the
gist of the tale above).

Anyway, that's to sort of set the stage.  A more foreground
story would be my reintroduction to lobbying in Oregon,
when what was then called the Software Association of
Oregon put some muscle behind testing the legislature
regarding adding more of this "computer stuff" to the high
school curriculum in a way that would help satisfy the math
requirement.**

A lot of kids were dreading Algebra II, having hated Algebra I
and Geometry.  You wouldn't need to be a genius to
switch gears and start playing with the bash shell, accessing
Python, a back door into LAMP. Something like I was already
doing with Saturday Academy, with Hillsboro Police Dept.
(West Precinct) a client.

But I don't think it was the legislature per se that set up
any roadblocks.  It's just there's not much leverage in
that world of mass textbook publishing.  Vast funds have
already been committed.  Tilting at windmills.  Live and
learn.  Make do with what you've got.

Speaking of Algebra II, there's that article in this issue of
Harper's about where we might be going with that.  I had
my own review in the Math Forum per usual (an old haunt
of mine):

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2591789
(as usual, I'm opinionated in this opinion column)

The theme of the workshop is Leveraging Python and I think
that dovetails nicely with Guido's CP4E and where are we
now lo these many years later?

To some extent the answers hinge on several ongoing
debates about the shape of education.  Some people
maintain that programming traces back to humanities topics,
such as scripting and play writing.  If programming is to
become more pervasive is this because of changes in
math class or in language arts?  A combination?

Do we too easily give in to the idea of computing as "number
crunching" whereas so often it's "pattern finding" -- more
lexical and/or graphical than strictly numeric?  Rhetorical
question.

Here's a recent sketch of the "theater" model for use in
the classroom.  Of course more gifted drawers than I will
freely improve upon my humble rendering.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirbyurner/9583829639/

Kirby


** An earlier exposure to Oregon lobbying was through my
job as a client-server programmer working in FoxPro.
Associated Oregon Industries (AOI) was my client and for
awhile I was accustomed to seeing Salem more from that
point of view.  FoxPro's days were numbered though, and
my career took me onward.
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