<html> Hey, I just spent seven hours working on a programming book so my brain is a little dull. Therefore instead of structuring my own comments into a marvellous essay (as you have done), I'll reply to fragments of yours. See, as I noted before, a job involving manual work results in a fresh, new brain at the end of the day:) <blockquote type=cite cite>Many people take community college classes in `computers' so they can get jobs, mainly office jobs. Nobody seems to notice that most of these classes are devoted to learning to use some specific program application like a word processor, a database, or a spreadsheet. The process of learning the commands, what they do, how to use them, and coordinate them into a work system---is what I consider complete garbage, a useless form of knowledge and skill that is so task specific that it amounts to engineering ignorance. </blockquote> Yes. Very true. However, I have had the experience of attempting to teach concepts to people wanting to use computers and they wanted none of that. To them, it was like I was asking them to do more work because they had to get the concept as well as the "facts". Perhaps self-confidence was to blame: they did not believe that they could figure out how to apply the concepts to apparently variable cases. <blockquote type=cite cite>I know you completely understand this process. But consider that it is absolutely ubiquitous. The same idea of keeping the code proprietary and giving you just the I/O parameters for a module is a technique used to keep the actual engineering concepts and constructs absolutely opaque. This is the black box theory. You don't need to know how it works, you just need to know what goes in and what to expect coming out, period.</blockquote> Some of this happens because of the private property issue. Some of it happens because code is getting to be so complex that an engineer who wants to use a certain library (which will save hundreds of hours of work) really just wants to know what values he has to pass in and what he's going to get back. I spend the better part of my life writing books to help him/her do this.  Programming is getting to be more and more of an industrial process; what you describe is one result of that. But really, what they're keeping back is not concepts, it is the implementation. The concepts can be found in any text book. Believe me, few of these companies are inventing anything. What they want to own is the accumulated labor of programmers. <blockquote type=cite cite>This same method of the black box, is used throughout most computer classes at the community college level. But it isn't just restricted to computer application classes. The same mentality pervades the entire education system, especially as this system is applied to, and seen through the eyes of the working class---even more especially as seen through the minority working class. In fact, I suspect the entire construction of the US working class is a product of this education system---particularly for men and boys.</blockquote> How men and boys in particular? No disagreement on class/education. When you go to a pricey private school, it's assumed that someday you're going to run the world, so you need to develop the ability to think for yourself (within the confines of the status quo, of course). No need to overrate private education, but there is certainly much more emphasis on language/foreign language training and on mastering symbolic thought than in the public schools. Public school, on the other hand, is run by bureaucratic committees and needs to address in the course of any given day, with almost no resources, every social ill that afflicts the students including ignorance, low self-esteem, malnutrition, segregation, etc. So part of the problem is that the resources aren't there to deal with all this. It's not just dealing with ignorance that's the problem. I've volunteered working/tutoring in the Oakland schools for the last five years. You wouldn't believe the text books; you wouldn't believe the training of many of the teachers; you also wouldn't believe how dedicated/smart/hard-working some of the teachers are. <blockquote type=cite cite>I don't know how to break out of this system, except at the one to one level. I tutored one of the guys at work through his high school algebra requirement last year and so I got a very close look at how effective education is as a class reproduction system. Much of my effort was devoted to trying to convince Joe M. that he wasn't stupid. About three times a week we had to go through layer after layer of insecurity, self-loathing, failure, defeat, humiliation, and on and on. It seemed to me his sensibility had been programmed to fail. I came to see Joe as the boy he had once been, in some long ago Oakland public school classroom, combating humiliation with a kind of hysterical rejection of the whole process of learning. Of course I ignored all that as much as possible, just to get back to something like factoring. </blockquote> So, look, you are also falling back on the processing of concrete data (factoring) versus the prior project of self-knowledge. Granted, if he can factor, he may decide he's not so stupid after all, but it seems to me that one of the great tasks of teaching is to enable the student to put away all that judgemental stuff and to realize the extent to which self-knowledge and taking himself seriously as a subject is the foundation upon which any real learning is built. <blockquote type=cite cite>This semester we are confronting the difficulty of writing---a whole other world of issues. So it goes. </blockquote> Yeah, that's way harder than math for most and much more difficult to teach as a technique separate from existential questions. <blockquote type=cite cite>In addition to all this there is a kind of teaching that seems to be particularly well suited to re-enforcing ignorance, humiliation, and defeat---and is also quite widely practiced. I am not sure how to characterize it. What it amounts to is an attitude and style. I the teacher am here to tell you what you should know to pass this class. Your job as a student is to learn it, period. I am not here to explain it. That's your job. I tell you what it is, and you figure it out. That's what learning is. All objections to this method are answered usually by saying that students were supposed to have learned something prior to taking the class. For example you are supposed to have learned what factoring was and how to do it, prior to taking algebra. Therefore all pleas for explanation are dismissed.</blockquote> A lot of this is due to the fact that teachers don't necessarily know/understand what they're supposed to teach. Also "blame the student" is an all-time favorite. One reason why I left teaching college is the perennial subject of discourse: "how stupid/ignorant/vulgar/hopeless the students are." <blockquote type=cite cite>Well, you get the idea. So the total impact of both the curriculum and the classroom experience re-enforces the class system and makes most attempts to educate your way out of the working class a humiliating failure. </blockquote> Yes, the curriculum and classroom experience reinforce the status quo. But what bothers me is the issue of "educating yourself out of the working class."  There's education, which is one thing, and there's "self interest," which is another. Why should these be tied to each other? Is this how truth liberates us? By making it possible to consume more? Live in fancier houses? And even if we had the ideal educational system, why should a person with an inborn advantage (like intelligence) have a decent life, while another, who can't juggle symbols, have a shitty one? Joanna </html>