Dreamweaver and the big red button

There is an interesting debate going on just now about whether or not to teach Dreamweaver as part of journalism courses. Differing views of course: Andy Dickinson is (more or less) for, Amy Gahran is (more or less) against, Martin Stabe (more or less) in the middle. Paul Bradshaw broadens the perspective somewhat by arguing for broad journalism degrees.

I would like to give a slightly different take on the discussion and argue that the the problem is not Dreamweaver per se but the way we tend to concentrate on particular pieces of software instead of the underlying structures the software addresses.   
I have been teaching "new media" for over a decade now and have come to the conclusion that we (journalism educators in the new media field) teach too many programs and not enough structural understanding.
We teach Red Button classes. Take a monkey and teach him that pushing a big red button gets him a banana and you soon have a happy monkey.
After a while take him to a banana warehouse. Poor monkey goes hungry. No red button to push. Unhappy monkey.

What we all to often do is teach our students how to use a particular piece of software - which red button to press.
They then go out into the real world to discover that the company they have come to has a blue button. Unhappy student.

We need to teach the underlying concepts, the logical structures, the why more than the how. What a Content Management System is and why it is. Once they understand that then it will be (relatively) easy for them to find the right button to  push, or to explain to the button pusher what they need.

Its the banana thats important, not the red button.

Comments

[Brendan Miller]

Just a typo to report:
"all to often" => "all too often"

[Colin Daniels]

HTML & a text editor is the way to go...

[albert]

I agree. And it's telling that this discussion is all about 'teaching Dreamweaver' and not about teaching HTML.