[Melbourne-pm] last thought on programming

John Thornton jdthornton at ozemail.com.au
Sat Jan 3 01:56:52 PST 2009


              Last thought that I can't resist making. To explain why I
still think that my school era [1980-1992] had "garbage" computer education,
let me put it this way:

 

             Did you know that the Victorian curriculum has gone backwards
in programming skills since the 80s? An outlandish claim? Well, I found
Maths A and Maths B books in a hop shop. In the back of them were
instructions for coding in Pascal!!! There was a list of Pascal commands!
Where is that list [Java whatever] in today's maths books? Nowhere! The
whole song and dance that the VCE is better than HSC at teaching people to
apply maths to real life is bollocks. I have never bought the whole sales
pitch that maths methods [It was change and approximation when I did VCE;
methods came later] is so flipping fantastic at teaching applied maths
skills. 

 

           While we are at it I spare no savagery for the whole "info tech"
subject either. I never did it. But it seems obvious to me that just as
science is broken up [enviro tech, physics, chem. Etc] info tech should be
broken up as well. There should be a subject where you take the computer
physically apart and aother one where you program. To lump info tech as one
subject is dumb dumb  dumb. 

 

          So that's what I think. Clearly my opinion of the VCE curriculum
is pretty low. 

 

          John     

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