[IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering" Educational SW

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 11:23:24 pm Alan Kay wrote:
> what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work
> in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others.
This is the part that interests me too ...
> So, if we get
> pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that
> most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how
> to make antibiotics.
... and this is where I get stuck ;-), particularly in the context of school 
education (first 12 years). Unlike the 3Rs, thinking processes have no external 
manifestation that parents/teachers can monitor, assess or assist. The 
economic value of deep thinking is not realized until many years later. The 
latency between 'input' and 'output' can be as large as 12 years and 
'evaluation' of output may stretch into decades!

Subbu