Re: re: Trial and Error
"It all seemed very advanced and technical at the time, but now if feels all dry-as-a-bone. Who wants to know about the various ways to depict many-to-one mappings when you can draw yellow and red boxes on a screen using LOGO and turtles and stuff, or make a beeper play Three Blind Mice?
I'd be interested to know what passes for Computer Studies nowadays. Really I would. My son did a BTec in the subject, but he didn't take to it at all. It seemed a mile away from my experiences - all K'Nex and robots... my experiences feel a bit like the nostalgia associated with my old maths textbooks that had entire chapters on the use of log tables and slide rules."
The current fad for making learning "fun" does seem to be detracting from actual learning. AT the early stages of learning, making it "fun" to help the pupils find an interest is very worthwhile. But at some point, one has to knuckle down and actual learn the hard stuff. I did great at biology and chemistry when it was all experiments and practicals and funny smells, sparks and flames etc, but soon lost interest when it got all theory and technical. I ended up doing Maths Physics and Computer Studies at A level because I really got into the theory and technical side of those subjects.
And no, it wasn't the teachers fault either. My Biology teacher was especially upset when I dropped the subject in favour of Tech Drawing because I was top of the class that year. I explained at the parents evening that it was the only way I could get to do Comp Studies. If I stayed with Biology, I couldn't later switch to CS, but I could do so if I did a year of tech Drawing first. The vagaries of school time tabling was to blame!!