Re: [seul-edu] Language to teach 10 year olds

[Manuel Gutierrez Algaba <algaba@gmx.net>]

At 09:56 a.m. 14/07/01 -0400, you wrote:
>I can't believe what I'm reading.
>
>What is the purpose of school?
>
>IMHO it is a place to prepare young people with the skills they need to be
>productive members of society.
>
>That said, wouldn't it be more appropriate to teach our young people
>languages that they will actually *use* when they leave school?
>
>20 years ago someone thought it would be a good idea to teach me logo, since
>I showed a very early aptitude with computers.  What a waste.  I wish they
>had taught me C or something more useful.  These days I think Perl or Python
>would be appropriate.
>
>Please please please I beg you don't bring languages into the classroom that
>will never be used in the real world by paying employers.


That's another good point in favor of python or even tcl. They resemble 
very much other
real languages. Regretfully, smalltalk and another fancies are a bit far 
from the mainstream.

The another point is that school must be market-independent and it must 
encourage certain
habits, certain skills that could be encouraged at school *or never*, again 
, python or tcl
help encourage these habits, skills.

python or tcl are a middle point decision between top-high-tech-easy-to-use 
and
everyday-ugly-day-by-day-bore-languages-and-tasks.

About Perl, I don't think it'll be used in 20 years and it'll be very sadic 
to teach it to a 10years old
or to anyone...  :)
Although, you could use Perl if you want your students to fail the subject 
or for another dark reason.

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MGA