Social Implications Comment from Paul

[maryfries]

For comments on social implications, see generic comment at end of Unit 8: All social implications: I have not commented on any, mostly because I like them as is (but with text editing) and felt I had nothing (important) to add. In general, they're not overly wordy, and the content is thought-provoking and good for discussion, so the real management is in the teacher's hand (and TG) not requiring much more curriculum edits from us. Of course, they deserve a careful re-read to clean up the text and to tighten some of the longer ones. As for the controversies (e.g., on 5.5.2, computers and war), I've stayed silent, but my own position (for what it is worth) is that our job is—as I've argued in the programming labs, too—to be educative/informational and think about what is to be learned, not just about what we want to "teach." I don't think we should be scared of a topic because it raises controversy, but I do think we need to find a way that doesn't saddle a teacher with situations they can't handle. Consistent with my comments on programming labs that it is not our job to show how smart we are but to show how smart kids can be, I also think that WE should be careful with the language we use so that it does not implicitly suggest our point of view. (It is impossible to be "neutral"—I'm not recommending that—but we must work hard to be informationally correct without being propagandistic. To me, some of the language we've used and the claims we make feel expressive of our own orientation, not just correct information.)