Once again, the author has made a point of discussing the factor of an unwieldy class size and lack of interactivity in the reinvention and "lack of synergy" in the CS&E community. However, the definition reinvention can be two different things. It coul d either be facillitating the re-emergence of a past practice, or taking an existing course structure and reinventing it (making it new, vibrant, possibly interactive). I doubt that Tucker is referring to the latter case, since at the outset of the piece he speaks about the almost instantaneous depreciation of CS&E educational ideas as technology progresses. It is obvious that there is a need for curricula of a current nature. In order to maximize time efficiency, CS&E educators must make moves in stra tegic directions to stay on top of the industry -- hence the title of this piece.

Unfortuantely, one of the ways of achieving this that Tucker suggests seems somewhat unfeasible to me, at least as a short term goal. Instituting a secondary school computer science program that people will accept on the same level as mathematics and the traditional sciences would take a huge amount of restructuring. In addition to this, the technology and the training required to be an educator are not cheap. As the author states himself, "The difference between the technological 'haves' and 'have-not s' is huge." CS is different than most of the four R's in that experience varies greatly. This is not entirely the case with something like mathematics, for example, where most college freshmen can be expected to have taken trigonometry or pre-calc.

The points raised regarding professors/PhD's actually teaching their courses are indeed valid; many of my friends are taking intro-level courses taught by grad students instead of their professors. But once again, CS is the exception to the rule rather t han the norm. I think that it is a fair assumption that students learned the most from their TA's and themselves (by actually coding, designing, hand-simulating, etc.). With the recurring discussion about validity of normal lectures in a multimedia worl d, the argument could possibly be made that 15 would have been just as successful with a grad student teaching, but the same TA staff.

I disagree with Tucker's view that CS&E educators should be preparing their students with the most current, top-level skills -- namely the ones that will get them a good job. It might be nice to learn something for once just for the sake of learning -- c omputer science for computer science's sake. Getting into the rat-race will occur regardless -- an education should be just that.

I agree that cs is a not just a tool towards getting a job -- I don't think that was the intended take home message of the article. I also think that teaching the top-level skills -- perhaps even the ones that will lead to top-level jobs -- is not a bad thing at all provided there is a solid base behind those skills. An education is a valuable thing -- is it unreasonable to think that it can't be applied to a profession?

I agree with the points your making -- I just can't go as far as you've gone to say that an education need not apply to anything else.