[plt-scheme] A Couple of Questions on DrScheme/Mzscheme

Matthias Felleisen wrote:
> Zbyszek Jurkiewicz wrote:

> > ... In Poland
> > people go to University at the age of 19, after 4 years of high school
> > where they learn about computers in a separate subject (called
> > "Informatics" btw), so they already know quite a lot about programming.


> If Polish high school students know how to design programs according to
> the recipes in HtDP (not necessarily know the book), I congratulate you
> and your country for putting together one fantastic pre-college curriculum.
> I'd love to see this in action.

Weeellll... I don't teach in Poland for more than 10 years, so I should 
perhaps keep my mouth shut, but I left *many* friends there, whose children
passed this experience. The differences between various schools is
horrendous, and there is currently no real common educational politics
(which means that we are already not too far from Western Europe...).

Perhaps you might know that in all those Central Europe countries the book 
market is polluted by tons of rubbish (cheap translations, or "manuals" for 
some popular software), but a desert as far the scientific/pedagogic books 
are concerned, since the life of an average academic teacher is tough, and 
writing such a book is time-consuming. So, they do what they can, and this 
is random.

Some departments maintain a more or less decent level of teaching mainly due
to people like you, Matthias, the authors of SICP, and others who *gave* the
world some free literature on computer science. Fortunately, in Poland, in
Hungary, Czech Republic, etc. the students master the English language quite
well (survival mechanisms...), better anyway than average *university* students 
in France (where les Grandes Ecoles and Engineering Schools swallow a good
percentage of ambitious and active bacheliers).

Jerzy Karczmarczuk
Caen, France