[OT] Teaching Haskell in High School

[Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]]

>>>>> "Hal" == Hal Daume, <Hal> writes:

Hal> Hi all,

Hal> Before getting in to this, let me preface my question(s) with a note that
Hal> I have checked through the Haskell in Education web page and have found
Hal> various links off there of interest (and I've googled, etc.  In
Hal> short: I've done my homework).

Hal> That said, I've been in rather close correspondence with my math/computer
Hal> science teacher from high school.  When I first took CS there, they taught
Hal> Pascal (a year early they had been teaching Scheme).  They switched over
Hal> to VB (alas) recently and have been teaching that for a few years now.

Hal> The teacher really wants to get away from VB, but is having a somewhat
Hal> difficult time deciding what to go to.  The two most promising options are
Hal> Haskell and Java.

I really recommend looking at the TeachScheme! curriculum and the How
to Design Programs curriculum.  Here are two URLs:

http://www.teach-scheme.org/
http://www.htdp.org/

This works exceptionally well at the High School level (I know that
earlier attempts to do this with Scheme failed---this one is very
different), and has been extensively applied with great success---also
and especially in conjunction with the AP curriculum and/or a course
on Java based on the same methodology.  There's a wealth of software
and material, and the TeachScheme! program offers (mostly free)
workshops on this.

Haskell just has some terrible properties when it comes to teaching
beginners.  Among them are the complex and easy-to-get-wrong syntax,
the available programming environments which are OK for developers but
awful for beginners.  There's also a dearth of good textbooks at the
level you need.  Haskell is very easy to learn (and an excellent
choice for a 2nd or 3rd language) when you know Scheme.

-- 
Cheers =8-} Mike
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