[Python-ideas] Does jargon make learning more difficult?

[Danilo J. S. Bellini]

On 14 August 2018 at 16:42, Michael Selik <mike at selik.org> wrote:

> In my own experience teaching, I find that many concepts are easier to
> introduce if I avoid the Python jargon until after I've explained what it
> does. [...]
>

"until after" != "forever".

A jargon might be just an acronym, a word or few words, meaningless for
someone who doesn't know what it means [sic], but even for this person the
jargon is useful: he/she can look for information about it. Teaching the
other way around to let the student grasp the "mechanical procedure" before
its name doesn't change anything regarding the names.

You can make everyone memorize the algorithm for adding base-10 whole
numbers by hand without teaching the students words like "adding" or "sum",
not even the "+" symbol. But it would be a confusion if you use any other
symbol or word to replace these "maths jargon" ones, and you shouldn't
avoid the socially used names/symbols just because you're teaching that
stuff for kids who still doesn't know them. And I'm aware of students
complaining they can't remember something they've learned (or simply they
didn't know someone was talking about what they know, a communication
issue) because they didn't know the name (not even for searching in the
web, a dictionary, whatever...).

I really regret that I complained when expressions like "modus ponens" and
"disjunctive syllogism" were teached to me during a class in 2004, that day
I thought these stuff were so obvious that they shouldn't have a name.
Until I found, later, that I needed to know these names in order to
understand some stuff I was reading. These names might had been hard to
memorize, but they were better than arbitrary names that no one else
happens to use.

Some of my worst teachers avoided the proper jargon forever, not just
"until after" definitions/examples. Several classes here in Brazil tries to
teach some concepts by forcing everything to be in Portuguese, like an
"ideology of full translation", and sometimes the translated names are
meaningless (no social context external to the class uses them). I got
somewhat angry when I found that a lot of stuff I knew had other names in
every useful social context, and I know who/what I should blame for that.

Terminology is the first step when going into a new domain... an example,
marked as "Important unit", can be found at https://www.statistics-made-
easy.com/introduction-to-statistics/


*This introduction will teach you all the basic terms of statistics. It is
important to understand them well before studying the unit about organizing
data. The lessons are organized in a way to make the learning process as
smooth as possible. Follow the logical order given here to study the
lessons.*


[...] It's tempting to use terms based on the origin of the concept,
> historical odds and ends, or even jokes. [...]
>

Usually, you're not naming something new and unnamed... but sometimes the
concept might have more than a single name. I think that's like irregular
verbs: they're so common that they "break the patterns"; concepts that are
spread/scattered everywhere might have a distinct name in each domain.

Names should be useful to precisely express the concept in social contexts,
but there's a context that should never be considered for that: the
"teaching" one. If the concept itself isn't known by some people, why care
about an alternative "non-jargon" name? A name doesn't belong to a person
or a class, but to the people who can use/understand it, and I believe
using proper jargon instead of alternative "simplified" names should
maximize that.

It's the social expressiveness towards people who already know the concepts
that should be emphasized, not some other arbitrary "simplification" goal
(e.g. minimize the number of characters, only use English, ...).

IMHO, avoiding jargon sounds like avoiding teaching. In the case of new
Python stuff, avoiding the socially standardized terminology is an act of
isolation/seclusion.

-- 
Danilo J. S. Bellini
---------------
"*It is not our business to set up prohibitions, but to arrive at
conventions.*" (R. Carnap)
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