September 21, 2009
computing as a liberal art
Ian Bogost suggests that computer science isn’t, in fact, a science:
But I think one of the greatest challenges comes from within the discipline itself: overall, computing simply doesn’t care about the development of its ideas. It fantasizes itself as a scientific or an engineering discipline, but throws the baby out with the bathwater (even the purest of sciences acknowledges that its ideas arise from the complex flows of history).
When Guzdial asks how we might bootstrap better computing education policy and practice, his question is tactical: how can we get funding agencies to allocate a portion of their budgets to the process of teaching computing as a valuable investment. This is a fine question, and an understandable one.
But what we really need is a new strategy. A wholesale shift in the way we think about computing (among other disciplines) that would underwrite a new way to do it let alone teach it. I think the frame shift we want is one that considers computing a liberal art rather than a science.
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