Of course "gnu math" is a pun on "new math", more formally known as SMSG, and designed to ride a tsunami of cold war paranoia, when the USA first started "falling behind" in science and technology, as evidenced by Sputnik. "New math" was supposed to turn out a new crop of eggheads, prepared to keep the USA in the game, and you can't say the effort failed entirely. We got NASA and Apollo, and later The Mouse in Orlando, all products of these post WWII curriculum reforms. However, there was never a huge buy-in among rank and file teachers, who felt left out of the loop. Plus SMSG had its own problems...
Rolling the scenario forward several decades, we've had the GNU/Linux revolution and the advent of more generous licensing agreements, complete with a new business ethic that deals kids in at the outset, as wannabee space cadets, as junior engineers. They quickly start learning, and in a few short years are out of the gate as players, spinning their own networks and lighting up the boards with new high scores, news of old records broken and so forth. The next generation starts ahead of the previous one, if all goes according to plan. That's called a learning curve. That's called future shock (especially if folks can't handle it, and go flying into buildings or whatever terrifying thing -- The Power of Nightmares is worth seeing on this ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430484/ )). With GNU/Linux and falling hardware prices comes greater access to sophisticated computing environments, such as only a cast of high priests had known before. The age of Turing Machines for Everyone had arrived. We'd be needing programs like CP4E to spread the love. Guido came up with a great language. The die was cast. Rolling forward some more, we have a big literature on file, but it's not that well organized. Hypertext glues it together, more than book covers, although the shelf space devoted to Python and related topics is respectable. In the meantime, OO has become well-established, so even if Python isn't your final destination, it's within the right track system. Switching to Java or C# is pretty easy, especially given Jython and IronPython use these for guts. As a Silicon Forest exec, my question is why non-OO problem solving, as taught on the math track, has all this political clout, whereas would be computer geeks have to drop out of school or sneak knowledge when not in class. Sure, there's some leakage, some osmosis, but for the most part it seems there's a dike, a barrier, designed to keep computer programming from "polluting" some purist tradition. And it's not just programming that's kept at bay, but computer graphics and animation. The pre-college mainstream remains strangely bereft of serious-minded spatial geometry, even in districts that could afford the low-cost diskless workstations or hand-me-down Pentiums. No A & B modules. No hexapents. What's the story here? Well, I don't think here is the right place to recap my analysis, but in gist: overspecialization has bitten us in the rear. This isn't a new conclusion. Bucky Fuller came to the same result. Lack of cross-disciplinary communication has hampered our ability to evolve the curriculum at a sufficient rate. We've fallen way behind. Again. But this time, there's no "new math" to the rescue. There's "gnu math" instead. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig