TITLE: We Are Not Alone
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: February 27, 2008  5:48 PM
DESC: 
-----
BODY:
In case you think me odd in my recent interest in the
idea of computer science for all students, even
non-majors, check out an
<A HREF="http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i25/25a01502.htm">
   interview with Andries van Dam</A>
in the current issue of
<EM>The Chronicle of Higher Education</EM> on-line:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
<B>Q: What do you hope to bring to computer-science
education?</B>
<BR/><BR/>
A: We'll try to figure out "computing in the broad sense"
-- not just computer-science education, but computing
education in other fields as well.  What should high-school
students know about computation?  What should college
students know about computation?  I think these are all
questions we're going to ask.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

<A HREF="http://www.cs.brown.edu/~avd/">
   van Dam</A>
is a CS professor at Brown University and the current chair
of the
<A HREF="http://www.cra.org/">
   Computing Research Association</A>'s
education committee.  I look forward to seeing what the
CRA can help the discipline accomplish in this space.

Do keep in mind when I say things like "computer science
for all students", I mean this for some yet-undetermined
value of "computer science".  I certainly don't think that
current CS curricula or even intro courses are suited for
helping all university or high school students learn the
power of computing.  (Heck, I'm not even sure that most
of our intro courses are the best way to
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2007-11.html#e2007-11-16T10_52_31.htm">
   teach our majors</A>.)

That's one of the concerns that I have with the proposed
Computing and the Arts major at Yale that I
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2008-02.html#e2008-02-26T18_00_08.htm">
   mentioned last time</A>.
It's not at all clear to me that a combination of courses
from the existing CS and art majors is what is really needed
to educate a new audience of intellectuals or professionals
empowered to use computation in a new way.  Then again, I
do not know what such a new major or its courses might look
like, so this experiment may be a good way to get started.
But the faculty there -- and here, and on the CRA education
committee, and everywhere else -- should be on the look-out
for how we can best prepare an educated populace, one that
is computation-savvy for a world in which computation is
everywhere.
-----