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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Subject: Re: Book REview
Date: 1996/05/10
Message-ID: <4musoq$88i@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>#1/1
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references: <4mk0vc$opp@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <3190CEC1.5799@io.com>
 <4muo9j$4hp@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
nntp-posting-user: ok
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-05-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe) wrote

>Don't
>think of

Which should have read
	Don't think of me as a lone madman, think of me as a miner's canary.

Coincidentally, after posting that message, I received the results of a
local survey of *post-graduate* students.

- "more than 50% were migrants
   or permanent residents who had not been in Australia very long"

-  about 50% of the students have worked overseas or had been asked by
   their employers to work overseas during the course (roughly split as
	50% Asian countries, 25% Anglophone countries, 25% European counties).

-  most students saw internationalisation of the post-graduate program
   "as having been achieved"

-  "the majority of the students could not find any subjects where the
   subject matter is Australian-centered" except that
     * some case studies (including one relating to Telecom Australia)
       were Australian-related, which was something of a problem
     * some students commented that 'most of the material' is US-oriented
       and that was a problem
     * some data base materials were identified as "very 'Western'";
       this is a code word for 'American'.

-  most students wanted an "internationalised" course
   if it wouldn't cost them any more or impair their job prospects

-  about a quarter of the students commented that they wanted our
   program to have more overseas content.


Now, this was a survey of POST-graduate students, not CS 1 students, but
"more than 50% migrants or recent permanent residents" describes our CS1
students pretty well too.  They come from a variety of Asian and European
backgrounds.  So an "Australian" edition of a textbook would switch off
half our students.  Not a good idea.

The bottom line for textbook authors and reviewers here is that
"Americanisation" _is_ an issue for Asian students; they _are_ aware of
the cultural biases in the text-books and it _does_ bother them.

-- 
Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ???
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.