Newsgroups: comp.edu
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!manis
From: manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis)
Subject: Re: secondary education computer mastery
Message-ID: <1991Apr10.164652.1726@cs.ubc.ca>
Sender: usenet@cs.ubc.ca (Usenet News)
Organization: Institute for Pure and Applied Eschatology
References: <ZDs6Z1w161w@nstar.rn.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 16:46:52 GMT

In article <ZDs6Z1w161w@nstar.rn.com> freewill@nstar.rn.com (Bill
Williston) writes: 
>   1. What computer skills are required for freshman CS majors?

I'm posting, rather than replying, because I want to raise some issues
which go beyond Bill's question. 

1) I heartily disapprove of the concept of `first-year [anything]
majors'. I'm constantly amazed at the number of students who arrive at
our university with a detailed educational plan, only to change it
completely after a year or so. Accordingly, secondary schools ought to
concentrate upon giving a student breadth, so that s/he knows enough
about the various fields of human endeavour to be able to choose
electives (and even a minor) intelligently.

2) Many of our students lack study skills. Many are even non-readers.
(They're not illiterates; they can read perfectly well, but choose not
to. This is not a serious disability in the `real world:' back when
Reagan was President, an article in the NY Times pointed to the number
of non-readers who had become heads of government in their countries.)
If I could point to the subjects which I think best prepare students to
do CS, I would choose mathematics and English. English is important not
just because CS students need to be able to read and write, but also
because the analytical and synthetic skills needed to be able to write
an essay turn out to be analogous (not identical!) to those needed for
programming and problem-solving proficiency.

3) As for specific skills, I'd tend to say that programming skills
aren't really that interesting to us (we don't have labs full of PC's,
so whether a student can make Turbo Pascal do weird things is, er,
academic). General computer skills are certainly useful: knowing how to
operate a word processor proficiently is certainly a strong advantage at
the beginning. Problem-solving skills are also useful: the kind of
analysis needed to set up a data base is similar to that needed to solve
a programming problem. 

Back to my original point: good as it is to know what sort of computer
skills a university might expect of incoming students, it's even better
to know, I think, that what universities really need are students who
are intellectually prepared for academic work. 
--
\    Vincent Manis <manis@cs.ubc.ca>      "There is no law that vulgarity and
 \   Department of Computer Science      literary excellence cannot coexist."
 /\  University of British Columbia                        -- A. Trevor Hodge
/  \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394
