Do High Schools Know What 'Computer Science' Is?

theodp writes "The first rule of teaching high school-level Computer Science should be knowing what CS is-and-isn't. Unfortunately, many high schools offering 'Computer Science' really aren't. Using her old California high school as an example, now-a-real-CS-student Carolyn points out that one 'Computer Science' class (C101) touted keyboarding 'speeds in excess of 30 words per minute at 95% accuracy' as a desired outcome, while another (C120) boasted that students will learn to use hyperlinks to link to other sites. While such classes fill a need, she acknowledges, they should not be called Computer Science. What's the harm? 'Encouraging more girls to take computer classes as they are now might have the opposite of the desired effect,' she explains. 'More girls might get the impression that computer science is only advanced application use, which might turn them off to computer science.'"

Comments

They Are Encouraging Girls to Take These Courses

[eldavojohn]

I read the article and the issue the author seems to take with this is that the approach to upping the ratio of females in computer science was to herd them into "computer science" courses at the earliest age (high school). This might have the negative effect if that's your strategy. The summary used a really unfortunate clip of the logic that seems to imply that the girls aren't being treated any differently than the boys so they must be deficient at seeing through these classes. But the girls are being treated differently in an effort to balance genders in computer science. The big problem is that these courses designed to "turn on" the thirst for computer science in young women have little if anything to do with computer science.

My own anecdote, I went to a high school in middle of nowhere Minnesota and we had Computer Science AB advanced placement. It was about twenty guys, I don't remember a single girl. We learned C++ in very simple forms and when I was forced to take the typing courses I wanted to kill myself. Did you know that typing courses are often a requirement to computer science courses? I was dumbfounded. As if the fact that I wasn't hitting 60 words a minute was reason to prevent me from learning about pass by value versus pass by reference (one of the basic concepts we covered). Still, even that wasn't much computer science and seemed closer to "C++ in a semester" style of teaching. You knew a language but you didn't quite get the really generalized concepts.

Computer Science = Algorithm Development

[maillemaker]

I hold a BS in Computer Science.

I believe the field should be called "Algorithm Development".

It is called "Computer Science" because it was computers that allowed the useful embodiment of many algorithms. But the reality is (often literally, during coursework), that the platform, hardware or software, is largely irrelevant to the mathematical development of algorithms.

Today, as the article notes, anything related to using computers is often labeled "Computer Science". Rather than trying to get the rest of the world to stop using a term that is actually somewhat intuitive, I think CS should change its label to something that is actually a more intuitive description for itself.

Volunteer & Make it Fun

[bill_mcgonigle]

I recently volunteered at a local high school for a lunchtime talk for a CS club.

It was advertised as "Learn how to send secret messages to your friends that even the CIA can't break" or something like that, nothing about CS.

In 45 minutes (60 would have been better), they learned how to represent base-26-ish in binary (5 bits), do a XOR, flip pennies to generate a one-time-pad, and encode/decode a secret message.

Non-CS students showed up. No experience was required - I could have done this with 4th graders. Many left happy - it's not clear how many realized they just learned some computer science.

No computers were employed in this exercise. It was sort of silly that we met in the computer lab - an art room would have had better table space. A whiteboard was useful.