TITLE: Programming != Teaching
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: October 06, 2011  3:21 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
A few weeks ago I wrote a few entries that made connections
to Roger Rosenblatt's <EM>Unless It Moves the Human Heart:
The Craft and Art of Writing</EM>.  As I am prone to doing,
I found a lot of connections between writing, as described
by Rosenblatt, and programming.  I also saw connections
between teaching of writers and teaching of programmers.
The most recent entry in that series highlighted how
teachers want their students to
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2011-09.html#e2011-09-13T19_17_56.htm">
   learn how to think the same way</A>,
not how to write the same way.

Rosenblatt also occasionally explores similarities between
writing and teaching.  Toward the end of the book, he points
out a very important difference between the two:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Wouldn't it be nice if you knew that your teaching had shape
and unity, and that when a semester came to an end, you could
see that every individual thing you said had coalesced into
one overarching statement?  But who knows?  I liken teaching
to writing, but the two enterprises diverge here, because any
perception of a grand scheme depends on what the students
pick up.  You may intend a lovely consistency in what you're
tossing them, but they still have to catch it.  In fact, I do
see unity to my teaching.  What <B>they</B> see, I have no
clue.  It probably doesn't matter if they accept the parts
without the whole.  A few things are learned, and my wish for
more may be plain vanity.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Novelists, poets, and essayists can achieve closure and create
a particular whole.  Their raw material are words and ideas,
which the writer can make to dance.  The writer can have an
overarching statement in mind, and making it real is just a
matter of hard work and time.

Programmers have that sort of control over their raw material,
too.  As a programmer, I relish taken on the challenge of a
hard problem and creating a solution that meets the needs of
a person.  If I have a goal for a program, I can almost
always make it happen.  I like that.

Teachers may have a grand scheme in mind, too, but they have
no reliable way of making sure that their scheme comes true.
Their raw material consists not only of words and ideas.
Indeed, their most important raw material, their most
unpredictable raw material, are students.  Try as they might,
teachers don't control what students do, learn, or think.

I am acutely aware of this thought as we wrap up the first
half of our programming languages course.  I have introduced
students to functional programming and recursive programming
techniques.  I have a pretty good idea what I hope they know
and can do now, but that scheme remains in my head.

Rosenblatt is right.  It is vanity for us teachers to expect
students to learn exactly what we want for them.  It's okay
if they don't.  Our job is to do what we can to help them
grow.  After that, we have to step aside and let them run.

Students will create their own wholes.  They will assemble
their wholes from the parts they catch from us, but also
from parts they catch everywhere else.  This is a good
thing, because the world has a lot more to teach than I
can teach them on my own.  Recognizing this makes it a lot
easier for me as a teacher to do the best I can to help them
grow and then get out of their way.
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