CS, Is it possible?

[bbi5291]

On the contrary, it seems to me that most math/CS people can be easily convinced that strong communication skills are an asset both in the academic setting of university and in the workplace. On one hand, insofar as English classes develop the skills of critical thinking, composing ideas, and expressing ideas clearly, they are far from useless. On the other hand, grading students on their ability to explore the theme of life in small town Ontario in the novel Fifth Business puts some students hoping to pursue math and CS programs at university at a disadvantage that I don't feel they deserve.

Mandatory courses are mandatory because they are intended to develop skills that will be indispensable and broadly applicable, such as the ability to communicate well. Elective courses exist to promote well-roundedness and to encourage students to explore subject areas they find interesting. I would be happy to see mandatory English courses concentrating on critical thinking and effective communication, with all that other stuff --- like exploring themes in literature --- moved to an elective English course.

Only somewhat relevant tangent: There's a stereotype that the better a student is at math, the less likely he or she is to be a good communicator. But of Canada's high school students, I've met many of the best in math, CS, physics, and chemistry. In essentially all cases the opposite has proven true; they were in fact very good at expressing themselves in speech and in writing.

[RandomLetters]

English as a topic of study is important. English as a high school course, however, is (relatively) useless.

One of the major problems of students not excelling in English courses is because it takes arguably the most work, for no more reward than any other course. Yes, communication and expressing ideas is nearly as important as mathematics and logic, but high school courses do little to promote higher level thinking. I think we can all agree that recording our "feelings" and what "we think" about each article is no better than repeating math problems for practice, but without the benefit of obvious rights and wrongs. This means that often, after spending much time composing their idea, students find themselves rewarded with a 70 because they failed to "hit the target".

Furthermore, the notion that many engineers and other technical specialists having poor communication skills is completely unrelated to high school level English. Usually what we see is not the lack of creative ideas or self expression, but rather they are just bad at English, whether they are still relatively new to Canada and the language, or because they were not given the education level now required. It does not take long to become fluent in a language, but to master it, and wield it with eloquence takes experience, something that high schools fail to provide regardless of student success. People who are good at communicating to not study obscure young-adult novel themes, but rather read many novels, and slowly absorb the ideas, prose, and style of many writers, eventually forming their own, personal ideas.

High schools need to encourage students to seek out knowledge for themselves, and it will fail at this by having courses that cause bitterness between students and teachers and provide few tangible rewards for so much effort.

[knowthyself]

Well put!

[2goto1]

Articulating well is an important skill, as is listening well. Someone with higher English marks is more likely to articulate and listen well. Articulating well is what forms the first impression that you make when you apply to university. It also sets first impressions with everyone that you communicate with, whether verbally or written.

I believe that one of the most important aspects of English that is not taught in high school, is logic. Not mathematical logic, but English language logic. Language logic teaches you how to analyze arguments - how to identify the premises presented, and how to identify which premises and conclusions are faulty, and which are valid. It is a worthwhile subject to study because you learn how to improve your own critical thinking skills, as well as learn to formulate arguments that are less fallacious. Those skills are extremely valuable in professional and personal situations.

[bbi5291]

Usually, students who have low English marks have low English marks because they struggle to express themselves clearly, or, like you said, understand the logic, or something like that. But this generally results in marks in the failing to 75~80ish range. Writing clear and well-developed arguments, thinking critically, analyzing logic --- you can be pretty good at all these things and still only get around 75-80, which is really not good enough if you want to be a very competitive applicant; the remaining 20-25% can easily be lost due to not being very good at writing poetry, creating collages, or picking up on symbolism in literary analysis. These skills aren't unimportant, but they're also not nearly as important as the essential skills we often like to think that English courses help develop, so they shouldn't be emphasized in mandatory English courses.

(And I wish that high school English classes actually did discuss logic. Some schools have Theory of Knowledge classes or whatever they want to call them for this purpose. It would certainly be nice if people learned enough logic not to fall for all the fallacies they hear on TV and from politicians; slippery slope, straw man, whatever.)

[2goto1]

Precisely, English articulation for university applications is needed to demonstrate technical proficiency of the language. Sometime the technicals have to be learned through tons of memorization and repeated application of subject matter.

I agree about the high school point as well. Critical thinking is a valuable all around life skill. Some critical thinking is taught in high school, but not much. I think that one common critical thinking theme taught in high school is "be skeptical of what you see and hear", which is itself useful in order to reduce the number of naive high school grads, but which doesn't give students basic tools to analyze the language of the world around them. I guess there's only limited learning time in high school, so priorities weigh in on curriculum I suppose.