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I love computers and I work with them everyday, but I believe the idea of a high school geared primarily towards software engineering is wrong. Computer Scienc

I love computers and I work with them everyday, but I believe the idea of a high school geared primarily towards software engineering is wrong. Computer Science teaches you to think logically about problems. It gives you primitives to build complex systems that will later help you understand the world. In fact, most computer scientists think the same when they approach a problem. But there are other kinds of thinking that are also important which high schools should introduce to students. Art. Music. Athletics. Each subject requires you to think in a different way. I will always remember what Marvin Minsky told me when I was taking his class: when he approaches a problem, he first chooses how he will think, not how he will approach the problem itself. He also said that he studied how the great minds of the past approached problems so that he could think like them. Do I want to think like a Richard Feynman or an Albert Einstein? Have you ever thought about that question and what it means? If not, I recommend you start reading books that they've written so you can try to capture that brilliance.

tikhonj 15y ago
That's a false dichotomy--a school focusing on CS does not preclude covering other subjects well. I doubt anybody wants to do away with art or music or English--rather, they want to take the existing curriculum and add CS, more than they've been able at normal schools. Both my father and my uncle went to a mathematically oriented school in Russia; however, this does not mean their education suffered. What it meant was that on top of doing normal school, they had more math taught at a faster pace. Specializing in high school does not stop you from getting a well rounded education, but it can provide focus and ensures an exceptionally thorough grounding in whatever subject you're specializing in.

tikhonj 15y ago

That's a false dichotomy--a school focusing on CS does not preclude covering other subjects well. I doubt anybody wants to do away with art or music or English--rather, they want to take the existing curriculum and add CS, more than they've been able at normal schools. Both my father and my uncle went to a mathematically oriented school in Russia; however, this does not mean their education suffered. What it meant was that on top of doing normal school, they had more math taught at a faster pace. Specializing in high school does not stop you from getting a well rounded education, but it can provide focus and ensures an exceptionally thorough grounding in whatever subject you're specializing in.