Comment Re:Culturally Relevant == Irrelevant to CS (Score 1) 612
This is totally bullshit and it's being done for bullshit political reasons. Nothing good comes from the politicization of science and yet the politicians cannot resist making a political issue of the lack of "diversity" in CS education. In my own CS experience nobody gave a shit about whether you were black, white, asian or latino and yes we had all of those races represented in the program. What mattered was whether or not you could hack it and continue advancing through the curriculum. The grades were always on a curve and the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out. In CS, as in other sciences, people respect knowledge, ability and intelligence, not the color of your skin or your cultural background. If you wanted to major in foo-fa the Humanities department was on the other side of campus.
The class you've described doesn't sound particularly healthy -- a culture of competition rather than cooperation ("the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out") and where grading is not based on whether you're objectively able but just whether you're better than each other ("The grades were always on a curve"). While those might be good for motivating a subset of somewhat ego-driven highly competitive students -- such as perhaps yourself, and also me when I was a student -- they're actually counter to what we're trying to teach. Computing is inherently collaborative, so heavily prioritising competition over cooperation when we teach it is probably quite damaging, and there is no good reason (that I've seen) for a competent course to grade on a curve. As I see it, your grade should not be higher just because you were in a poor cohort with uncompetitive fellows (the curve pushing you up), nor lower because you were in a cohort of very able students (the curve pushing you down) -- your grade purports to be a straightforward and objective assessment of your understanding and performance in the subject, so that is probably what it should be. If, as you've suggested, your whole CS program was a grade-curved culture of relentless competition, then educationally and culturally, that's actually probably not a good thing. Even though you and I might have done very well out of courses like that.