Acceptance of OpenOffice.org (was Re: Gov't , economics and technology (was Re: METROCAST BLOCKS RESIDENTIAL E-MAIL))

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 02:47:59PM -0500, Dan Jenkins wrote:
> I was talking to someone (a middle-school teacher) at a party over the 
> holidays who mentioned his school's "computer science" class. I was 
> curious what programming languages they taught. He assured me that they 
> didn't allow hacking at all. After a short discussion, I discovered he 
> apparently did not know that computer software was written by people 
> using programming languages. (I didn't try to find out where he thought 
> it came from.) So, their "computer science" class doesn't teach, nor 
> allow, programming at all. I just went to get another drink; it wasn't 
> worth the effort to explain otherwise.

As a counter to this:

At the high school level, typically "computer science" is a prep course
for the Computer Science A or AB test. When I took it (about 6 years
ago), this was in C++ -- It's been changed now to be Java, after I
finished the program in 2001, but the AP test itself is focused around 
concepts:

Computer Science A [1]

Computer Science A emphasizes object-oriented programming methodology
with an emphasis on problem solving and algorithm development and is
meant to be the equivalent of a first-semester course in computer
science. It also includes the study of data structures and abstraction,
but these topics are not covered to the extent that they are covered in
Computer Science AB.

Computer Science AB [2]

Computer Science AB includes all the topics of Computer Science A, as
well as a more formal and a more in-depth study of algorithms, data
structures, and data abstraction. For example, binary trees are studied
in Computer Science AB but not in Computer Science A. The use of
recursive data structures and dynamically allocated structures is
fundamental to Computer Science AB.

Up until about 3 years before I took the class (98-99) all the AP
materials and course materials were in Pascal. 

So, although most classes labelled "computer science" (*especially*
before High School) may not be actually teaching said topic in the
primary and secondary schools, there is definitely some teaching of
these concepts. However, of the 20-30 kids in my class, I was the only
one to actually take the AP test. (I scored a 5, the highest possible,
primarily due to out of class learning.)

Not a perfect world, by any means, but if you have the interest, and
want to put forth the effort, you typically can get to a point where you
have the knowledge neccesary to demonstrate some computer science
knowledge at the high school level. This is true in any subject: primary
and secondary education caters for the most part ot the bare minimum,
but there are resources to go farther than that if you wish, and have
the determination to do so.


[1] http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compscia.html?compscia
[2] http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_compsciab.html?compscia

(Apologies ahead of time for anyone I may have made to feel old due to
the years listed in this post.)

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer