Re: Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
 news:b2q9o35fvjgv56e93c6atho6vqr7gs7o13@
4ax.com...
> On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 04:33:21 -0800 (PST), Alistair
> <alistair@ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>
> With changes in emphasis, people always complain about such dumbing
> down in particular fields.
>
> Trivia used to refer to the trivium, which were the "easy" Liberal
> Arts, (grammar, rhetoric, and logic).
>
> The hard (graduate) liberal arts were arithmetic, geometry, music, and
> astronomy.
>
> Times change.

Not sure it's anything at all to do with the curriculum.

"Graduates" - and it seems one "graduates" from primary school nowadays -
approach problem-solving by perpetually "asking the expert," whose opinions
are then routinely dismissed if not politically correct.

There appears to be no motivation to find out WHY, and if you offer to teach
how to use a tool or a method, that is rebuffed. Just tell me the answer,
don't bore me with how I can work out myself or how I'm going to do it after
you retire or drop off the perch. It has nothing to do with "olden days" or
expired technologies. It's a matter of analytical approach which costs
expensive time being replaced by trial-and-error which can be performed on
the cheap by monkeys, and it's not just in CS it extends to all fields.

As for the source of new CS ideas being South-East Asia - er, there are
certainly some brilliant minds from that area. Sadly though, the majority
just come out of the "name-of-discipline" sausage-factory, having paid the
all-important fees and clutching the all-important piece of toilet paper.