Re: [luv-talk] Urgent / Important: Is "Computer Science" Science?
Donna Benjamin <donna@cc.com.au> wrote:
Hang on - Where's computer science? Oh that's right it doesn't exist in the brave new world of the new Australian Curriculum. It's a general capability (ICT) or a "Technology" along with design, woodworking, cooking and agriculture - in a strand called "Digital Technologies"
It was more than this when I was in secondary school. Then, at least, everybody did a little programming (in BASIC or Logo). Some of us learned Pascal too. I don't know what the computing subjects in years 11-12 would have entailed, as I didn't choose them. As to whether computer science is science strictly so-called, I think it's a similar question to whether mathematics is. At university, mathematics tends to have an interesting relationship with both the science faculty and the arts faculty; at some universities it used to be (and perhaps still is) open to arts students and science students, though it was formally part of the science faculty. Computer science tends to be regarded as an engineering discipline. Irrespective of where it best fits, it belongs in the school curriculum. It lies at the base of much of the technological change that is affecting twenty-first century societies in most of the world. To use the technology effectively and to shape its future requires understanding, and this begins at school.
On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Jason White wrote:
It was more than this when I was in secondary school. Then, at least, everybody did a little programming (in BASIC or Logo). Some of us learned Pascal too.
But that was at a time when computers barely figured in everyday life. And you had to program to use computers. These days IT is everywhere, as a car is. But it does not make car mechanics a mandatory subject.. Most people use a car, and do not have any interest to figure out how it works. IT at school is quite often a marketing exercise as well, to get people used to Microsoft or Apple or whatever products. At school my daughter learned to use Microsoft Word. Great;-) But as a library leader she does some web design etc. - it is fun for her. There are plenty of opportunities to do something with computers, if you are interested. The curriculum, as far as I know, describes a minimum "core" of subjects to be taught everywhere in Australia. It does not stop a school to offer more, and a student to choose other subjects when interested. For them it may be more interesting to program, instead of being told how to use Word. It also challenges the teacher to choose topics to attract students, instead of being restricted by a set of mandatory Word and Excel lessons prescribed by a bureaucrat in Canberra. Regards Peter
Peter Ross wrote:
These days IT is everywhere, as a car is. But it does not make car mechanics a mandatory subject.. Most people use a car, and do not have any interest to figure out how it works.
One of the (many) reasons I don't have a car, is that it is not possible for me to learn how to unfuck a modern automobile in a polytechnic short course ;-) I hear that these days you don't just need a toolbox, you need fancy-pants computers to talk to the engine. There seems to be more electronics in a new car than in my entire house... Admittedly, I can't unfuck the hub gears or drum brakes of my bike, either...
Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Peter Ross wrote:
These days IT is everywhere, as a car is. But it does not make car mechanics a mandatory subject.. Most people use a car, and do not have any interest to figure out how it works.
One of the (many) reasons I don't have a car, is that it is not possible for me to learn how to unfuck a modern automobile in a polytechnic short course ;-)
I hear that these days you don't just need a toolbox, you need fancy-pants computers to talk to the engine. There seems to be more electronics in a new car than in my entire house...
There was a good presentation on this subject a few years ago at LCA, showing the results of connecting a Linux machine to the in-car systems. On the broader issue, though, the analogy between cars and computers breaks down fairly quickly. A car has only one primary function that is well understood, and every car uses a similar means of providing transport (some have electric engines and batteries rather than internal combustion engines but that's about as far as the differences extend). A computer is an entirely different kind of device: it is applicable to a quite general class of problems, it is highly flexible and adaptable in that software can be reconfigured or even replaced easily, and its interactions with the user can be much more complex than those of a car. Although a car mechanic can fix the car if it goes wrong, there really isn't that much difference between such a person and a regular user in regard to what each is able to accomplish with the vehicle in normal circumstances (i.e., they can both drive it from place to place). There is, by contrast, a far greater difference between how a relatively uninformed user and an educated user can interact with a computer to solve problems. For example, there are many tasks that I can perform much more efficiently than an uneducated user because I know how to use the shell and the basic UNIX tools, or how to use an editor such as Emacs or Vi, or how to write little shell scripts to automate repetitive tasks. Notice that this is not a matter of fixing the system when it breaks - hence not analogous to what the car mechanic can do. Rather, my problem solving ability is greater, and this is partly a function of my level of knowledge by comparison with the neophyte's. The relatively uninformed users can still operate a computer to solve problems, of course, but not to the same extent or with the same efficiency and generality as the skilled users. So there's a good case to be made for having more people toward the relatively skilled end of the scale, and this requires educational effort, which explains why the issues discussed in this thread truly are significant. A computer's problem-solving ability depends partially on the user's skill and knowledge. Usually, the more capable a software tool is of solving problems, the more knowledge is required to use it, or to use it well.
Jason White wrote:
There is, by contrast, a far greater difference between how a relatively uninformed user and an educated user can interact with a computer to solve problems. For example, there are many tasks that I can perform much more efficiently than an uneducated user because I know how to use the shell and the basic UNIX tools, or how to use an editor such as Emacs or Vi, or how to write little shell scripts to automate repetitive tasks. Notice that this is not a matter of fixing the system when it breaks - hence not analogous to what the car mechanic can do. Rather, my problem solving ability is greater, and this is partly a function of my level of knowledge by comparison with the neophyte's.
The relatively uninformed users can still operate a computer to solve problems, of course, but not to the same extent or with the same efficiency and generality as the skilled users. So there's a good case to be made for having more people toward the relatively skilled end of the scale, and this requires educational effort, which explains why the issues discussed in this thread truly are significant. A computer's problem-solving ability depends partially on the user's skill and knowledge. Usually, the more capable a software tool is of solving problems, the more knowledge is required to use it, or to use it well.
In that context, I would argue that rather than teaching kids how to use winword -- or bash, for that matter -- you would teach them how to use google, how to RTFM, how to interact with either the FOSS support community or the proprietary vendor's equivalent support channels. That is, given an ARBITRARY problem, how to - recognize the class of problems to which it belongs; - find others who want to solve problems in that class; - find EXISTING solutions to same; and - find tools to facilitate solution of same. I dunno about anyone else here, but for me step #1 of a problem tends to be to wander over to <people who know stuff> and say "hey, I have <problem>, I think <tool> might be a reasonable approach, but is there a better way?" Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with computer science, or science, or computers... I think when I first ran into something like this, it was in primary school, and it was called "learning how to use the library" or something like that. (...well, except insofar as the support community requires you to know how to use a web forum or IRC or a telephone or whatever.)
Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
In that context, I would argue that rather than teaching kids how to use winword -- or bash, for that matter -- you would teach them how to use google, how to RTFM, how to interact with either the FOSS support community or the proprietary vendor's equivalent support channels.
Yes, exactly. Of course, some background technical knowledge is required to be able to understand the manual, the howto guide or the responses from the community. I don't know what that knowledge consists in, precisely, beyond general literacy, reading comprehension and facility with reasoning and problem-solving. For example, the goal of the ideal Linux introductory course would be to take beginners who can reason, read and understand text relatively well and give them guidance up to the point at which they can read manual pages, books and other documentation, acquire new knowledge and solve problems on their own. I don't know whether anybody has seriously tried to determine what background needs to be put in place for this. There's also a role for broad overviews, though - knowing what types of tool are available makes it easier to recognize that one is having a problem that might be solved by looking for a certain kind of solution. For example, I want to find every seven-digit phone number in my document and add a country and area code (the same one, just for simplicity in the example). I might immediately think "regular expression", but someone who doesn't know such tools exist wouldn't.
On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Peter Ross <Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de> wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Jason White wrote:
It was more than this when I was in secondary school. Then, at least, everybody did a little programming (in BASIC or Logo). Some of us learned Pascal too.
But that was at a time when computers barely figured in everyday life. And you had to program to use computers.
These days IT is everywhere, as a car is.
But it does not make car mechanics a mandatory subject.. Most people use a car, and do not have any interest to figure out how it works.
I think that everyone should know the basic concepts of how a car works. Being able to actually fix a car isn't a useful skill for most people. But knowing how a car works can be a matter of life and death.
The curriculum, as far as I know, describes a minimum "core" of subjects to be taught everywhere in Australia.
It does not stop a school to offer more, and a student to choose other subjects when interested.
I haven't been following the situation much in Australia. Is it becoming like the US where the pressure to cram for frequent tests uses up all the available time and prevents teaching anything else? Do schools still concentrate on trying to get the sub-standard students to complete the standard curriculum in the standard class (which is never going to work) and ignore the students with an IQ above 100? On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Roger <arelem@bigpond.com> wrote:
wrong information are so out of date it's embarrassing. At xmas just gone she rewrote one of the recommended books to something more relevant.
She writes her own class tutorials because none exist. She observes that there is no link between years 11/12 and university year1/ 2.
Is she publishing this under a CC license? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
I haven't been following the situation much in Australia. Is it becoming like the US where the pressure to cram for frequent tests uses up all the available time and prevents teaching anything else?
Does it really, now? I might be out of date on this subject, having been born back when Robert Menzies was Australia's PM, then attended a hick high school[1] and an obscure college[2], but I distinctly recall theses and major projects but no 'cramming for frequent tests'. FWIW, one's real education was in the library, as usual. [1] http://www.menloschool.org/ [2] http://www.princeton.edu/
On Thu, 26 Jul 2012, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
I haven't been following the situation much in Australia. Is it becoming like the US where the pressure to cram for frequent tests uses up all the available time and prevents teaching anything else?
Does it really, now?
Apparently Dubya's "No Child Left Behind" initiative is to blame for most of that. It's a recent thing. The US used to have a world leading educational system. You were fortunate to be educated before the rot set in. I was fortunate enough to miss some of the worst changes to Australian education (VCE) by one year. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Russell Coker wrote:
I was fortunate enough to miss some of the worst changes to Australian education (VCE) by one year.
Nitpick: VCE is .vic.au, not .au. FWIW I had state schooling in VIC and WA from up to matric, where most of the time it's glorified daycare rather than education anyway. For matric I took private-school IB instead of VCE[*], and that worked out really well because the class sizes were tiny and the teachers were well-paid, and understood both how to teach and what they were teaching. Contemporary VCE students gave the impression that ALL those properties were absent from the VCE stream... [*] mainly because I was transferring from WA, and the IB syllabus went something like "there are twelve subjects, all are two years. Pick six." Whereas the VCE syllabus was a book about an inch thick listing half-year (quarter-year?) classes. I took one look and said "I am way to busy to even READ that, let alone make an informed decision".
Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
Apparently Dubya's "No Child Left Behind" initiative is to blame for most of that. It's a recent thing.
Yeah, I figured that's the specific idiocy you were talkig about. The worst pity of it is that he and his ilk convinced a large numbe of people to attempt to starve and compete the schools into improvement. Fortunately, there are still some unbelievably devoted teachers out there. And libraries.
Russell Coker wrote:
I haven't been following the situation much in Australia. Is it becoming like the US where the pressure to cram for frequent tests uses up all the available time and prevents teaching anything else? Do schools still concentrate on trying to get the sub-standard students to complete the standard curriculum in the standard class (which is never going to work) and ignore the students with an IQ above 100?
There was an interesting interview on 7:30 Report a while back with some guy from one of the northern european states (Finland, I think) talking about how buggered teaching-to-the-test is and how in Finland, teachers have the same level of respect (and pay) as doctors. I can't find the transcript in five minutes, so you'll have to find it yourself.
On this matter, OSIA has made a submission to ACARA which can be seen at www.osia.com.au. What OSIA argues is that Computer Science needs to be available to students as a subject in the National Curriculum in its in own right, and notes similar calls in the UK, and USA, and also by some academics in Australia. This will help reverse the decline in enrolment in Computer Science in Australian Universities that has occured in recent years. OSIA also believes that this is critical to the sustained development of the Open Source Software sector in Australia. OSIA anticipates that there may be further opportunities for comments on the National Curriculum in the future. So please feel free to express your views on this here or contact me off list if you prefer. Cheers Daniel (Disclaimer: I am an OSIA Director)
Donna Benjamin <donna@cc.com.au> wrote:
Hang on - Where's computer science? Oh that's right it doesn't exist in the brave new world of the new Australian Curriculum. It's a general capability (ICT) or a "Technology" along with design, woodworking, cooking and agriculture - in a strand called "Digital Technologies" It was more than this when I was in secondary school. Then, at least, everybody did a little programming (in BASIC or Logo). Some of us learned Pascal too. I don't know what the computing subjects in years 11-12 would have entailed, as I didn't choose them.
As to whether computer science is science strictly so-called, I think it's a similar question to whether mathematics is. At university, mathematics tends to have an interesting relationship with both the science faculty and the arts faculty; at some universities it used to be (and perhaps still is) open to arts students and science students, though it was formally part of the science faculty. Computer science tends to be regarded as an engineering discipline.
Irrespective of where it best fits, it belongs in the school curriculum. It lies at the base of much of the technological change that is affecting twenty-first century societies in most of the world. To use the technology effectively and to shape its future requires understanding, and this begins at school.
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\begin{rant} Jason White wrote:
Donna Benjamin <donna@cc.com.au> wrote:
Hang on - Where's computer science? Oh that's right it doesn't exist in the brave new world of the new Australian Curriculum. It's a general capability (ICT) or a "Technology" along with design, woodworking, cooking and agriculture - in a strand called "Digital Technologies"
It was more than this when I was in secondary school. Then, at least, everybody did a little programming (in BASIC or Logo). Some of us learned Pascal too. I don't know what the computing subjects in years 11-12 would have entailed, as I didn't choose them.
I expect it's as useless as the rest of VCE matric. Probably it involves learning to use winword and whatever dreamweaver is called these days.
As to whether computer science is science strictly so-called, I think it's a similar question to whether mathematics is.
I am very clear (i.e. a bigot) on this: science *is* the empirical method. Therefore soft sciences (like psychology and anthropology) that do studies instead of experiments are not Real Science.[*] Likewise *real* (i.e. pure, not applied) mathematics is not science because it doesn't involve experimentation. It doesn't need to, because it exists in the realm of pure thought. It is, as it were, a /field isolate/ because other disciplines do not have this property. (Well, perhaps wishy-washy stuff like philosophy, ethics, law, theology, linguistics ... OK, I take back the "field isolate" remark.) CS is simply a branch of mathematics. The parts that aren't, which tend to be labelled "software engineering" are really just business management. [*] I gave this spiel to an alleged theoretical chemist recently, and he disagreed violently, although it was my bedtime so I didn't enquire as to details. Whenever someone tells me "I want to study CS at uni" I tell them adamantly that they should take a pure math or physics degree, *not* anything labelled "computer science", because in my experience the latter is a pointless waste of time. They might have to use matlab, but they won't have to put up with memorizing Java APIs. And their fellow students tend to be the ones that are doing interesting CS -- in their spare time. Various IRC denizens have corroborated that this is an international phenomenon. It isn't helped by all these damn kids who consider CS to be a way to make big bucks straight out of school. Nor is it helped by universities insistence on allowing those kids to get to third year (so as to get their tuition fees) rather than flunking three-quarters of them in the first year. >rant rant rant< Further reading: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/10/sheepskin.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html \end{rant}
On 07/25/2012 02:51 PM, Trent W. Buck wrote:
\begin{rant}
I am very clear (i.e. a bigot) on this: science *is* the empirical method. Therefore soft sciences (like psychology and anthropology) that do studies instead of experiments are not Real Science.[*]
FYI the experimentation in psychology is usually referred to technically as "quasi-experimentation" rather than "studies." See: Cook T D & Campbell D T 1979 Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Chicago: Rand McNally. Ben
Ben Nisenbaum wrote:
On 07/25/2012 02:51 PM, Trent W. Buck wrote:
\begin{rant}
I am very clear (i.e. a bigot) on this: science *is* the empirical method. Therefore soft sciences (like psychology and anthropology) that do studies instead of experiments are not Real Science.[*]
FYI the experimentation in psychology is usually referred to technically as "quasi-experimentation" rather than "studies."
See: Cook T D & Campbell D T 1979 Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Chicago: Rand McNally.
By "studies" I was referring to the case studies, questionnaires, interviews &c that are used as supporting evidence but aren't remotely experimental. I may have misused the term; if so, sorry about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Psychology lists "methodologies".
Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
I expect it's as useless as the rest of VCE matric. Probably it involves learning to use winword and whatever dreamweaver is called these days.
It probably is now, yes. Back then, I think the students at least learned a little about logic gates and a little about programming. I would be surprised if they were taught sorting algorithms, data structures, etc.
As to whether computer science is science strictly so-called, I think it's a similar question to whether mathematics is.
I am very clear (i.e. a bigot) on this: science *is* the empirical method. Therefore soft sciences (like psychology and anthropology) that do studies instead of experiments are not Real Science.[*]
This raises the question of whether applying statistical inference to behavioural "experiments" qualifies to make psychology scientific. Its practitioners claim that their methods are sufficiently rigorous (e.g., psychometric techniques) to make their empirical investigations scientifically sound by comparison with, say, biology or the physical sciences.
Likewise *real* (i.e. pure, not applied) mathematics is not science because it doesn't involve experimentation. It doesn't need to, because it exists in the realm of pure thought. It is, as it were, a /field isolate/ because other disciplines do not have this property. (Well, perhaps wishy-washy stuff like philosophy, ethics, law, theology, linguistics ... OK, I take back the "field isolate" remark.)
I agree. I think the reasons why mathematics is formally counted among the sciences are more a reflection of its applications than of the essential character of the subject.
Whenever someone tells me "I want to study CS at uni" I tell them adamantly that they should take a pure math or physics degree, *not* anything labelled "computer science", because in my experience the latter is a pointless waste of time. They might have to use matlab, but they won't have to put up with memorizing Java APIs. And their fellow students tend to be the ones that are doing interesting CS -- in their spare time. Various IRC denizens have corroborated that this is an international phenomenon.
Pure mathematics is one subject that has long been on my list of desirable areas of study. As a philosophy graduate, at least I know what a formal proof looks like and how to evaluate argumentation - background which is of much more lasting value than the Java APIs.
On Wed, 2012-07-25 at 09:52 +1000, Jason White wrote:
Donna Benjamin <donna@cc.com.au> wrote:
Hang on - Where's computer science? Oh that's right it doesn't exist in the brave new world of the new Australian Curriculum. It's a general capability (ICT) or a "Technology" along with design, woodworking, cooking and agriculture - in a strand called "Digital Technologies"
It was more than this when I was in secondary school. Then, at least, everybody did a little programming (in BASIC or Logo). Some of us learned Pascal too. I don't know what the computing subjects in years 11-12 would have entailed, as I didn't choose them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProgramByDesign Any thoughts on ProgramByDesign, the new name for the TeachScheme! project out of Rice Uni. that has been working in this area since 1995? Beyond putting Racket (the new name for DrScheme) on SFD discs, I haven't done anything with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%29 (Win, Mac OS/X, Linux) I don't think that http://drpython.sourceforge.net/ DrPython had sufficient development done to get to Racket's level, but am guessing.
participants (8)
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Ben Nisenbaum -
Daniel Jitnah -
Jason White -
Peter Ross -
Rick Moen -
Rodney Brown -
Russell Coker -
Trent W. Buck