Teaching python (programming) to children

[Steve Holden]

"Cliff Wells" <logiplexsoftware at earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:mailman.1005596777.32500.python-list at python.org...
> On Saturday 10 November 2001 08:33, Laura Creighton wrote:
>
> >
> > I have a problem. I can't pick the _students_ that come into my
> > classroom.  And wherever I have come across a student that learned
> > calculus from the graphing-calculator school, I have found somebody
> > who does not understand, really understand, what 'this function is
> > increasing' _means_.  They are incapable of doing their own
visualization
> > of that.  Fortunately for me, I don't run into these people that often.
> > But they are crippled, so much that it shows.  It is evident in trying
> > to have the simplest of conversations with them.  They have little or
> > no mathematical intuition at all.
>
[ ... ]
> I have serious doubts about programs designed by fiat.  The problem hasn't
> been solved, it's simply been taken out of the hands of the teachers and
put
> into the hands of a committee composed of... well, quite possibly mediocre
> teachers.  So now we will be enforcing a curriculum designed by mediocre
> teachers onto brilliant teachers.  Not so good.  I agree that something
needs
> to be done, but I think perhaps it should be done at the time of hiring
> teachers rather than trying to fix them after they've been hired.
>
> Think about this:  if such a curriculum could be designed that it wouldn't
> matter if the teacher were excellent or mediocre, why couldn't that
> curriculum be issued as a software program that the students could follow
> without a teacher?  Doesn't seem likely, does it?  No curriculum will ever
> replace the need for good teachers, and no curriculum will ever make a
poor
> teacher into a good one.
>
Richard Feynman's notes on the choice of high-school physics texts, were
extremely revealing. I fear they still reflect the majority of educational
design, in which the material isn't even sensibly considered by many of the
participants, who are unequipped to do so by training or (dis)inclination.

loved-chemistry-until-i-got-a-bad-teacher-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/