Each week, Bear Facts will post an article from a past issue.  These articles can demonstrate what life was like for a high school student in that year.  What seemed important to them that seems commonplace now?  What were the issues facing high school students of the day?  This week’s article ran in April 1979.

By Charley Kline

Next year, the high school will offer two new courses in mathematics: computer literacy and computer programming. Computer literacy will involve the applications of computers in different fields of mathematics and science, and computer programming will be concerned with programming languages and their proper use.

“However,” said math teacher Mr. Jim Hallett, “the computer literacy course may be dropped for lack of material. You’re good for about two weeks in something like that and then both student and teacher will get bored,” he said. In place of the literacy course, a second programming course would be offered.

The administration had originally intended to purchase two computer terminals which would be connected to the computer at Barrington High School. This idea, however, will probably be dropped also. Instead, the school would buy several Apple II microcomputers for the students to use. The justification of this was cost. The terminals, if bought, would cost approximately one thousand dollars each. “This, added to the cost of using the Barrington computer, makes the expense too high to warrant this method of obtaining access to a computer,” added Mr. Hallett.

The programming course, if taught with the Apple II computers, will involve the structure and use of the BASIC computer language.  While learning the language, students would solve problems on the computer that will require the application of each element of the BASIC language as it is learned.