Re: Helping Students

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <5bqrkh$i9c@saturn.brighton.ac.uk>, jmb36@bton.ac.uk (baker) writes:
> I have no idea why you people get so upset about helping students with
> their school work, after all, aren't you here to help pass on your Ada
> skills and knowledge? I mean, that's what you'd be doing as I am learning
> Ada at the moment.

Nobody here can speak for all of us, but I will answer for myself.

    1.	When I went to school, we were supposed to do our work alone

	Now I am the first to admit that industrial practice often
	involves collaboration, but it is not collaboration on things
	that can be gotten from books.

    2.	Educators in this group suggest against the practice

	I am as quick as the next person to disagree with these
	folk when the topic is something where I have experience,
	such as operating system considerations.  As regards
	educational techniques, however, I must defer to them in
	most cases (aside from occasional comments about the way
	their results come out in industry).

    3.	There is not sufficient bandwidth

	I regularly killfile long topics cross posted to other
	groups which typically devolve into "my language is better
	than yours".  Although there are sometimes valid points
	made in such discussions, they are few and far between.
	There are just not enough hours in the day (my day, anyway)
	to follow every student in the world who has trouble with
	their homework.  Considering that many participants in
	this group aspire to encouraging more widespread use (and
	therefore teaching) of Ada, the problem would only get worse.
	Obviously some _other_ electronic forum for handling
	homework problems would address this particular reason,
	but comp.lang.ada is not the place.

So those are my reasons.  Your statement was "I have no idea why you
people get so upset", so now you have at least one set of reasons,
even if you disagree.

Larry Kilgallen