From: dal3@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (dale.e.parson)
Subject: Re: um, maybe this is a silly question
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 18:18:28 GMT

In article <1bhc3tINNt8q@agate.berkeley.edu> bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
>quigley@acs.ucalgary.ca (Martyn Thomas Quigley) writes:
>>Bloody right you are.  Your perception of trigonometry may be "boring
>>and confusing and full of facts to memorize"; if so, that's very sad.
>>Seems to me that you have missed something important.  You're also
>>implying your perception is a common perception.  I hope it isn't.
>
>Actually, when I was a kid in high school I enjoyed trig.  But then,
>I also enjoyed _Ivanhoe_.  In both cases I was the only one in my
>class who did.
>
>If, since then, there has been a revolution in the teaching of trig so
>that kids no longer go around chanting "sohcahtoa" and "sine, cosine,
>cosine, sine, cosine, cosine, sine, sine" then I'm very glad to hear it.
>
>In any case, I hope this side issue doesn't make us lose sight of the point
>I wanted to make, which was this:  It so happens that computer programming
>is a source of immediate gratification for a lot of young people.  They
>easily get caught up in projects and enter into the sort of intense
>commitment that kids in school otherwise get only from athletic teams.
>*Any* formal curriculum is likely to destroy that.....

Bless you. The homeschooling mathematician dad appreciates a little
professional reinforcement now and again.

>  To take a university CS
>curriculum, water it down a little, and serve it up to high school kids is
>really missing an opportunity, I think.  That's why I don't like to hear
>talk of loop invariants in this context.  Teach them that in college, when
>they're too old and cynical for enthusiasms anyway.

Makes me glad I quit teaching undergrad CS after only 1 year. Imagine being
less cynical than your students at age 37.

The last time I read something by Papert (an interview in a UK educational
technology company's newsletter, I can't remember the name) he said he
stopped getting upset about people violating the spirit of Logo in their ways of
teaching it to kids. Said its a flexible tool & of course they'll adapt it
to their style. Now of course if he were doing the introduction ...

I have a couple of posts from May/June comp.lang.scheme & elsewhere about
scheme being used as a preferrable alternative to BASIC/Pascal in high
school for anyone interested in that. Send me email.

I'm also in the middle of weaving my thread between orienteering & turtle
geometry & hope to post about phase 1 in a few weeks. Sierra's orienteering
map reading is getting to the point where I can strengthen the symbiosis
between orienteering & Logo. I now have trees, marshes and control
checkpoints up on the screen, and as soon as I teach the turtle how to keep
score, she'll be walking the little beast through its first orienteering
course. Can't wait.

 Dale Parson, dale@mhcnet.att.com

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