On 02/26/2012 10:53 PM, Geoff Canyon wrote:
It's interesting that you bring up the slaughterhouse analogy -- I've used
it on many occasions to make the opposite point: I know that cows are
butchered to make steaks. I've seen videos of it, in fact. I shouldn't have
to learn how to do it to order at McDonalds.
No, you shouldn't; but it is valuable knowledge insofar as you then are
aware that by
eating meat you do it at a price; the suffering of vast numbers of
animals, that can, quite easily be avoided.
There's a world of difference between "Kids today" and "computer
programmer." Forcing the 99.9% of kids who *won't* become computer
programmers to use a command line because of the .1% who will is like
forcing every kid to butcher a hog before they are allowed to eat bacon.
"Kids today" is the phrase used in Britain to justify NOT teaching
literature written before 1945, history before 1914,
and the general dumbing down of most things.
Apart from any other considerations, while slide-rules and command
lines may not be all that useful nowadays
[mind you, you'd be hard put to quite a few things on a computer without
some sort of nodding acquaintance with a terminal],
we should think about what the words "cultured" and "educated" mean. If
all one wants to teach one's kids are things that
may have some pragmatic use, then we should scrap 90% of every school
curriculum, so we can end up with an sort of
1984/Brave New World hybrid and say prayers to Henry "History is Bunk"
Ford .
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Richmond<richmondmathew...@gmail.com>wrote:
Kids today don't need to know
what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see
one
in their lives.
Really? I wonder about that. Surely every potential computer programmer
should
have some sort of understanding of command lines. This is rather like
saying that
that children brought up in cities should have no understanding that
animals are slaughtered
so that they can have meat on their plates, because they will never see a
slaughter-house.
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