[Fsf Education] [Experiences] Teaching Computer Science to Class XI and XII

[Raj Singh]

Hello,

I did a stint of voluntary teaching many years ago to students of Computer
Science (Class XII) as the regular staff appointed for the course had left.
My experiences and observations are as follows :

(1) Students don't know if they have aptitude (or interest) for programming
computers at such an "early" age. Most of them had the choice of the
subject thrust on them as parent's choice (computers is a "happening"
thing).

(2) A strong maths background helps immensely.

(3) The CBSE syllabus does not leave time for assimilating concepts by the
student. The syllabus instead of emphasising problem-solving methods and
algorithms lays far too much stress on learning a particular language's
constructs and that too without proper context.

(4) The data structuring part poses lot of difficulty for the students to 
grasp -- more abstract tends to be more difficult.

(5) The range of topics to be covered in the syllabus is very large and 
loses the focus of using computers and programming as tools to solve 
problems.

(6) The student who finds computers and programming interesting at that age
(15-17 years) tends to ignore (or pay less attention to) other important
subjects like physics, chemistry, economics, etc. He/she tends to get
immersed into this subject to the exclusion of other subjects. Perhaps,
this happens due to not having the proper perspective on the importance of
this subject vis-a-vis other subjects and non-availability of correct
guidance.

(7) Subsequent years have seen Pascal being replaced by C and then by C++
without adequate grouding of the student in problem-solving methods,
algorithms and data structures concepts.

(8) The laboratory part of the subject is tough on the students -- I feel 
this is again due to weaker conceptual grounding that they have.

(9) The general quality of teaching of computer science in schools is poor.  
Good teachers in other subjects who get training with computers find better
paying jobs and leave. Subject specialists are not available and teaching
is usually with contract staff who perhaps has a diploma in computers from
institutes like NIIT, Aptech. Teaching staff with BCA/MCA kind of
qualifications is rare. In both these cases the teacher has no training on
how to teach school kids.

I thought it worthwhile sharing these with you as the recent focus seems to
be on the hardware and software content (OS/language/tools) for schools --
training the teachers for this purpose will be a far tougher task. Also,
focusing on the purpose and utilization of the computers in school would
perhaps help us to make a better choice of which tools/utilities to select.

-- Raj

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