Xenophobia and Pussyfooting Around the Real Issues

Reading the mainline newspapers and listening to the government's excuses for the xenophobia attacks makes one wonder whether people have lost the ability to see things for what they are.

The local George Herald, Thursday 5 June 2008, have been brave enough to come up with some interesting comments on a two page spread addressing the xenophobia attacks in George. Is it that in a smaller town the police and journalists are closer to the population and the real issues or are they less intimidated?

• "Massive unemployment root of attacks" - 65% of the people living in Thembaletu are unemployed
  
• "Thembalethans looked at the newcomers (Somali shopkeepers) and felt jealous that they could so easily set up a business and make a living here" - Mayor of George
  
• "A primal trigger is crime and sheer opportunism when people start looting"
• "Most of the Somalians have gone back into the community and were welcomed with open arms by Thembalethans who discovered that their own (South African) shopkeepers had taken advantage of the situation by suddenly upping their prices for commodities like bread, which was sold for R16 for a loaf"
• "There are some rotten apples amongst the Somalians who stole the Halaal food intended for the entire community"
• Criminal elements breaking into houses and vehicles of Somalians
• "A mediation team from the Western Cape Premier's office that will head up and coordinate ongoing efforts of integration of immigrants in local communities, arrived on Monday and will remain in the Southern Cape for a while"
• A Somalian was killed with a knife in the Blanco community hall where the foreigners were staying . The reason is suspected to be over a blanket.

Looking at all the comments it is obvious that the causes of xenophobia has been several and from all sides. The solution of reintegration lets me think of a battered woman being reconciled with her husband. Today sorry, tomorrow the same story?

One thing that concerns me is the comments made by several government officials during the attack. Mbeki for one said that they should not attack fellow Africans as they supported them during the struggle, how can they now turn on them? This makes me wonder whether the fact that I am white and, therefore, a colonial (foreigner) and not a fellow African makes me a more legitimate object to attack next time. Add to that the fact that I was the opposition in the struggle adds more fuel to the fire. I am just wondering if an attack was launched at the whites the same type of rhetoric would be used to justify it, and this by a government that is supposed to see to the safety of all its citizens. This does not leave me feeling very comfortable.

Comments on the "White Boy's Club"

Nothing gets we hotter under the collar and more wanting to spit fire than comments such as made on ITWeb "The White Boy's Club". So what if the hard core coders are mostly white males! It has never been an exclusive club, but one by choice and nobody has been excluded from joining regardless of race, gender, or whatever. On the contrary, non-whites and non-boys have been welcomed with open arms. Ask me, I am female and have been begged to join some groups.

As lecturers we have rejoiced about every non-white and non-male person joining our IT course. Unfortunately very few females have the interest to sit behind a computer screen 24/7. The ones that did were never discriminated against by their fellow white males, on the contrary. The same is true for the non-white males/females. Unfortunately, mostly the white males have been able to finish the course. Is this their fault that they seem to enjoy the field more than the others and are prepared to put up with the non-glamorous, hours-and-hours slogging, lonesome-existence on their computers? I challenge anybody else to try and join them. It is by no means easy or an exclusive club!

I am sick and tired of people classifying everything by race. In 1992 the whites voted for a non-racial country. Since then nothing but race has been pushed down white males' throats. Up to the extent that so many that could have created jobs and build this country have left and are putting their talents to the advantage of other countries. What a disgrace for South Africa and where we could have been in 2008. Let everybody in this country do what they are passionate about and good at. Let's take hands and build this country regardless of race, gender, etc. Let's all become green again as when the Springboks won the World Cup in October 2007 and all these issues were forgotten. We all sat next to each other cheering the Springboks on. It is possible as soon as we all become green again!

"No parents' plea from young facebook users"

The new move to tell it all on blogs and publish pictures on facebook leaves us with some serious privacy issues. An article in last week's "The Sunday Independent" 16 March 2008 discusses the issue of allowing parents to sign on to facebook to keep up with their offspring and their doings. Many children do not want their parents to share in their online disclosures. A professor of communication at the University of Illinois who has extensively studied digital culture, namely, Steve Jones, is quoted as saying: "What they want to keep most private is not something they wish to keep from strangers, it's the things they want to keep from people that know them." He contends that children do not care what someone who does not know them finds out, but they do care about what someone that does know them intimately finds out. The article recommends that rules are set up for their mom and dad's behaviour online.

I can believe the concern of children for I have seen some party pictures that students have had on their computers that I would also not show to my parents if I were them. But having them public raises other concerns. It is not your closest family that is your major problem, but future employers and anybody else who would want to draw a profile of you. A good blog can count in your favour but I know from personal experience how a profile drawn from someone's blog discounted him from a possible job before an interview was even conducted. In the same newspaper mentioned above another article appears that discusses someone who lost her job due to some comments made on her blog. In her case all turned out well, but most of us cannot afford these scenarios.

I have often read blogs myself to arrive at an understanding of the person I am dealing with. Sometimes I was left breathless at the amount and type of personal detail disclosed. Is it ethical to use blogs and pictures in this way? I do not know, but if you are prepared to make it public, you also have to be prepared to live with the consequences.

Should Computer Science be Taught at Schools

This topic has been a contentious issue since the early 1970's when universities started teaching Computer Science. When I started teaching at the RAU (now UJ), teaching the first years was reserved for the best lecturer, third years for the second best lecturer and second years for the noobs (new lecturers). This was based on the experience that teaching programming is extremely complex. There is a big difference between teaching a computer language and teaching programming where a computer language is used, but the major aim is to change a word problem into code. When schools started making noises that they wanted to teach programming a lot of debate took place. The verdict then was already that it should not be done - not because scholars would not cope, but because of the difficulty to teach it properly.

Shortly after that schools included Computer Science (CS) as one of their subjects. Although I must admit that there are some excellent CS teachers, the majority of the better ones have left for greener pastures. This is not surprising in the current schooling system and the need for their skills in industry. Unfortunately this has resulted in the following horror stories:

• A local school, a few years ago, wanted to train new CS teachers (teachers who did not know any programming) by sending them on a three week Java course!!!
  
• Currently I have three first year students who have had Computer Science at school. Different schools I must add. None of them can use if's and while's, let alone use arrays. They all admit that their teachers could not teach them programming and they passed on theory alone! This is not the first time we have students with this type of experience.
• The projects the scholars have to do for their matric mark is often done for them by someone else. This is not detected by the examiners.
  
• One of my past lecturers refused to allow his children to do CS at school. They have pursued computer careers after successfully completing a CS degree and post degree studies at a University.
• One of my CS colleague's son believed that he was too dumb to understand programming after his school experience. His mom recognised his talent and convinced him to do it. It took some time for him to gain the confidence that he could actually program. He is successfully employed in a computer programming career at the moment after completing his diploma in IT.
• One of our part-time lecturers begged us to intervene in the local school as his son dearly wanted to pursue a computer career but was totally put off believing that CS was too difficult. He is now following another career path. We have lost many a good prospective student in this way.
• Some grade 10 scholars that I have for extra classes were on the point of dropping CS as they found it too difficult. After two of the parents asked me to intervene with extra classes the kids are now really enjoying it and they are showing a lot of natural ability.
• The word that CS is too difficult has spread in the school and many prospective computer scientists are pursuing a different career.

With the great need in computer specialists we cannot afford to loose these kids that are put off a computer career due to teachers that do not understand how the subject should be taught. The problem is even worse after the recent move to object oriented programming with its added complexity and ridiculous examples in most beginner text books. Although Java is based on classes, they do not have to be taught in the beginning. Basic programming can be taught in the main method.

If you have a child who is interested in computers and your local teacher does not have a good track record, rather let him/her take another subject instead of CS. All university courses start their students from the beginning and prefer students with only a background in computer literacy to students that have to be de-taught and retaught in programming.

Get out of the Whining Party - You do Not Need Fancy Equipment to Learn Valuable Skills

What an uplifting experience. I was watching some street soccer on TV this afternoon. A section of a standard street was demarcated and changed into a soccer field for a while. Professional coaches donate some of their time weekly to train "at risk kids". They even compete for a street-cup. If you want to support a worthy cause see their web site Soccer in the Streets. Bravo to the organisers!

Life in South Africa so often degenerates into a whining party between the haves and the have-nots. In the 1960's and 1970's (yes, not so long ago) practically all kids played in the quiet streets and the veld and invented their own games. They, for example, learned to be creative by making high jumping poles from broom sticks and an old mattress for landing area. Cricket bats and wickets were invented in the same way. The whole area's kids would have hours of fun and learn several life skills at the same time.

Some time ago I had a related argument with someone who whined about the lack of technological equipment in a school. He did not realise how lucky they really were. You only need computers if you want to teach kids to use an office program or if you run a Computer Science Course. (Teaching Computer Science should be banned from all schools - not because the kids cannot cope with the content, but very few teachers can teach it! This is a topic for a separate blogpost, though). Some computers in a library for kids to do research should be sufficient for most primary schools. Let kids learn the other subjects through more exciting ways and learn much needed life skills at the same time. Most lecturers and teachers should also be banned from using data projectors! There is a place and a use for data projectors, but they should definitely NOT be used to run through a slide show that is received as a teacher's aid with a text book. I tried it a few times and fell asleep in my own class!

HELP! I have been if'ed again

Living in a home with more than one coder/hacker sometimes leads to interesting communication. When I ask charlvn whether he wants cauliflower OR broccoli for supper he will answer "yes" in a typical if scenario

if(cauliflower OR broccoli)
supper
else
no supper

At work we are confronted by a similar situation. The students and staff have been asked to march tomorrow to show their support against racism. The idea originated in the widely distributed and overplayed video shot by students at the Free State University. The video was a stupid idea affecting people's human rights. But it is not more or less stupid than women (or anybody else for that matter) voting for the current ANC president who is an extreme example of a human's rights abuser, unless you do not see a woman as human of course. As much as I do not participate in a march against the latter I will not participate in any march as I believe there are other avenues to express one's dissatisfaction.

Well, that said, it still leaves me in a typical if situation:

if(do not participate in march tomorrow for Reason1 OR Reason2 OR Reason3)
"Though shall be labelled a racist"
else
"Though shall not be labelled a racist"

There is no way out of this one, no matter what my reason for not participating. The answer to the OR will be "yes" and I shall be labelled.

When HELP files become UNHELP files

A few years ago the only Java IDE's that were available for free were so primitive that using them to teach Java was painful. We had to load several to enable students to exploit the different features. Transporting programs between them was a nightmare. This changed considerably for the better when NetBeans became available. It combined most of the necessary features and was, best of all, for free. Since then different versions have seen the light, each improving on the previous, the latest being release 6. 0 .

On the positive side, where the students used to have long lists of errors displayed after a compile, most of these are now caught during typing. Unfortunately, building more and more wisdom into the typing phase also creates its problems. After starting to use the latest release we were confronted by a message "add @Override annotation" when we tried to override the "clone( )" and "toString( )" methods. This has never before happened so the help files were scoured. Trying to find anything in the Help files on this topic was impossible. With the expansion of the features the help files have expand correspondingly and have become, to say the least, unhelpful files. After quite a bit of wasted time and a disbelief that it wasn't addressed in an easy to find position, the alternative was to Google and apply some guesswork.

When does the expansion of a system's features complicate it so much that it becomes mostly useless.? We find this problem with so many other systems as well, for example, cameras, video equipment, cellphones, etc. Most people use very few features because it is all they need. Learning the other options just requires too much time and effort and will be forgotten as they are only used sporadically, if at all.

Sun has gone Open Source with their JDK 6 project .