more on broken schools (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy)

kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

Salvador Mirzo  <smirzo@example.com> wrote:

I don't have much information.  The command line seemed an awful
experience to them.  I suspect that they thought that the command line
was archaic means of system interface and that perhaps it was just a
teacher idiosyncrasy.

>
This is something I see a lot of... we get interns who are engineering
students or computer science students and they have never seen a command
line of any sort before.  Not bash, not powershell, not anything.  They
first of all don't get the command line concept and secondly they don't
get the concept of the heirarchical filesystem.  "The file is on the
computer!"  "But where on the computer?"  "It's on the computer!"

That's almost incredible, but I'm afraid I believe it.

We even got a guy with a PhD in CS from a university that I had previously
thought reputable who had never used a command line and who just could
not understand how make works in spite of the O'Reilly book.

What O'Reilly book?  Are you saying the PhD was an O'Reilly-published
author?  That would be literally incredible.

I think some of these concepts have to be introduced early on, but they
NEED to be introduced early on in order to get any kind of basic computer
literacy.

You know what I think?  I believe the problem is more on the teachers.
Teachers---university professors---may perhaps be too depressed and too
sick of computers themselves to have the energy to master the subject
with energy left to teach them.

What I'm seeing is that those with the energy end up seeing resistance
from the rest.  Many don't want their colleagues to enrich the course
because they more or less share the teaching of these courses, so
someone with skills above the average happens to be a nuissance to the
rest of the group of teachers.  Sadly, the above the average might be a
very small minority.

These days, even computer science departments are completely based on
Google services, say.  Students don't even have the chance to run the
local mail server.  It's appalling.