Article 81246 of alt.peeves: Path: matra.meer.net!goonsquad.spies.com!genmagic!bug.rahul.net!a2i!news.erinet.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uxh.cso.uiuc.edu!jimhill From: jimhill@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Jim Hill) Newsgroups: alt.peeves Subject: Computers in the Classroom Date: 18 Aug 1995 21:46:52 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 64 Message-ID: <4131oc$and@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: uxh.cso.uiuc.edu I went to a pretty good high school. Even for public schools, JCHS cranked out a disproportionate share of students bound for the Ivy League, the Service Academies, the Pacific Highbrow Schools, etc. They have one of the nation's most complete high school programs of music, as well as theater, mathematics, science, art, and the ever- popular sports. They are heavily supported by the community, which is always willing to pony up for another bond issue to improve the buildings or the equipment or the faculty salaries. In perhaps their most inspired move, they hired my parents, who keep me up-to-date on the latest events at the ol' Alma Ma-tehhr. Nine years ago, The Principal died. Mr. Fleming was one of the last of a dying breed. He was firmly convinced that self-esteem comes from honest accomplishment and that empty congratulations cheapened both the giver and the recipient. Most of the school's accomplishments were achieved under his watch...but as I said, he died. He was replaced by his senior vice-principal, a bootlicking toad if ever a bootlicking toad there was. Ed.D. clutched firmly in hand, Rich set about dismantling the school. Peer groups were added, mentoring, student counseling, more paid counselors, student assemblies to discuss how each person is unique (Some More Unique Than Others(tm)), the usual touchy-feelie bullshit. Since his accession to the throne, standardized test scores have plummeted, the number of Natl. Merit Scholars has dropped to (in a good year) 2, teen pregnancies continue to rise, the dropout rate is considerably higher, and the beat goes on. But Richard likes computers. A lot. He likes them so much that he has spent quite a bit of money buying them and filling the school with them. As a result, the physics students can now watch animated harmonic oscillators. They can't solve one, but they can watch a cartoon of it. The foreign language students can jack headphones into the ol' CD-ROM and hear "No me gusta" until the toros come home. The English students can now typeset all their assignments, assuring that while their essays are poorly written and punctuated, the margins are justified. The art students can MacPaint themselves into a tizzy. But this doesn't come without a price, gentle readers; oh, there is a price. All these computer labs have to go _somewhere._ More often than not, that's a converted classroom. So, at the same time the school is being flooded with more and more computers, classroom space is getting harder and harder to allocate. In scheduling next year's classes, Richard discovered a way to save a classroom: drop an elective course that only the dorks took. Which one? Wait for it... Computer programming. That's right, $150,000 in computer equipment packed into a school with 2500 students, and not one damn class in programming. Not one damn section of one damn class in programming. Not even BASIC. Not even a puff-piece "Intro to Computers" in which we discuss the difference between CPU and ROM. Jesus H. teaching WordPerfect for Windows and Weeping Christ, how out of kilter can the priorities get? Jim -- jimhill@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~jh9572/ "For Christ's sake, listen to yourself! You're going to meet a man named Cyberbob!" -- Dennis Miller, _The Net_