> But I do I think we have no choice but to teach in a way that let's our > students know there are competing versions in play. I think *that* with a > very high level of confidence. > > Art
Different teachers will inevitably bring their own "spin" to their teaching. I can well imagine a class in which Python is brought up primarily to talk about its deficiencies and inferior qualities e.g. a presentation by some Scheme guy, pissed that the Python community is making inroads in K-12 and anxious to head that off. The background of the teacher matters. John Zelle has taught Java a lot, and brings that experience to bear. At OSCON, I attended a talk on Ruby geared especially to Java programmers, e.g. "this is how you're used to doing it in Java, here's how you might do the same thing in Ruby" (followed by a much shorter piece of code). I don't think it's the obligation of a teacher to accommodate the spins and slants of every other teacher, e.g. I'm happy to teach about the property feature without a hint of your dark warnings about "information hiding" and the like. Let Arthur handle Arthur's spin. Let students drift from one teacher to another, building up their own biases and spins. I think we've already agreed it comes down to judgment. And when it comes to judgments, we may differ. That in itself gives neither of us the right to complain that the other is "discounting" or "ignoring" the other. The right to go with one's own sense of right and wrong is a feature, not a bug. I see no reason to complain if you teach a different version of Python from mine. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
