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				May 6,1981



Fr. William J. Wood, S.J.
Provincial for Education
The California Province of the Society of Jesus
Jesuit Provincial Residence
300 College Avenue
POB 519
Los Gatos, CA 95030


Dear Fr. Wood:

Dr. Ruth  Davis  shared  your  letter of  January  29,  1981  (concerning  LISP,
computing, and the course "The Art of Computer Science":EECS129) with me.  I  am
the Quixotic soul (perhaps  "sole"!) who proposed and  delivered the course  and
its perspective on computing to the EECS department at Santa Clara. It has  been
an education:  experiencing the highly divergent  reaction of the faculty. I  am
enclosing a short note  that I wrote, justifying  the course content (after  the
fact) to several skeptical faculty members.  Their resentment was kindled by the
"superficial tone" of the "Duck Soup" story --also enclosed. More frequently  of
late do  I despair  over  the problems  of  closed minds  and  compartmentalized
thought.  Alas,  these attitudes  also  appear in  several  of the  students  of
EECS129: with arts, sciences,  and engineering students  in the course,  someone
always feels some aspect is "irrelevant".

There is a hopeful note  locally however: there is  a strong possibility that  I
may be able to offer this  course to less indoctrinated SCU students  --entering
freshmen, rather than  the current  graduating seniors.  This  program would  be
offered in  the  Humanities School,  rather  than the  Engineering  School.   Of
course, in  that  situation I  will  only  trade "despairs":  closed  minds  for
untrained minds.  I have  little faith in the  preparatory programs that  infect
our high schools.  Indeed, the target of the EECS129 approach is the high school
system; but that's  another battle.  I do, however,  enclose an  early paper  of
mine, "The Bankruptcy of Basic",  decrying the contemporary electronic  driver's
education view of computing. My, this letter does sound depressing!

On a more positive note, I noticed your reference to Plato's view of writing  as
an enemy of memory: only yesterday I  came across a discussion of this  position
in an article by  Georgescu-Roegen dealing with the  beginning of science.  This
was in a  book entitled "Analytical  Economics".  How far  I've come from  "real
science"! Dare I tell my engineering colleagues?

If you'd like more details on my "heretical" position I'd be pleased to respond.


						Yours sincerely,


						John R. Allen
						EECS Department
						Santa Clara University
						Santa Clara, CA 95053
						984-4611

Enc: A Rationale for EECS129
     Duck Soup
     Bankruptcy of Basic