[Haskell-cafe] RE: Answers to Exercises in Craft of FP

Christian Hofer Christian.Hofer at gmx.de
Thu Jan 27 15:09:56 EST 2005


Dear Hamilton,

I think we just have a different framing of the problem. You are 
confronted with the laziness of students and want to teach them 
something anyway. By that you are forced to disrespect the autonomy of 
students who are intrinsically motivated (e.g. by giving bonus points 
on exercises).

I on the other hand am a great fan of the old German university system, 
which they are currently about to abolish in the so-called "Bologna 
Process". The idea is to just treat students as if they were 
autonomous. Most students fail in the exams in their first year, 
because they are not used to solving exercises when nobody forces them 
to do it (s.th. they should of course already have learned in school). 
Those students that don't recover don't belong to university. But most 
students learn from this negative experience, that they have to work on 
their own. And that is more important to learn on university than the 
details of a certain programming paradigm...

It's nice that you offer me your exercises with solutions. But I am 
afraid that does not really help me, because I want to do (and am 
actually doing) the exercises in the books that I read (because that is 
the way to get a better understanding). Thus what I would need are the 
solutions to those exercises.

Regards,
Chris



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