Our freshmen come in with the fixation that calculus is the formulas
for derivatives and integrals. When we try to talk about slopes and
areas and continuity, they try to change the channel. Since that
doesn't work, they complain: essentially, we're not teaching it like
they learned it in high school. They keep asking if they can use the
derivative formulas, but get them wrong when they do. The product,
quotient, and chain rules are just too complicated, and we're being
very unreasonable to insist that they be memorized, let alone used
correctly. And on and on....
Thus do my evaluations read from the last time I taught Calc I.
Now it seems like all I do is to try to persuade them that there's
more to calculus than derivative and integral formulas, that
problems on an exam need not be just exactly like exercises in the
text (only the numbers changed to protect ... someone, I guess),
and that some problems might even require creative thinking!
Students used to expect college to be different from high school.
Now they complain long and loud that it is. Our administration has
heard their cries, and we are to incorporate multimedia in our
calc courses as soon as possible (with what money?) in order to
make them more attractive and satisfying. Keep the customer satisfied!
Yes, we are encouraged to attend workshops (during classes--
it won't hurt to skip a day or two) on treating students like
customers at a business. After all, our greatest problem is money;
i.e., we're state-supported according to the body count, so we need
more satisfied bodies (customers). (That's the administration's view.
The recent survey for North Central showed that the faculty's view
is that academic standards and the library are our greatest problems.)
It'll be interesting to see how it all comes out.
PS $1.6 million for renovating the stadium, but nothing for the
library. Those science journals are just too expensive. The
legislature has decided we can do without so many: we cut
about $100,000 this year for the third year in a row. But we
contributed $250,000 toward the new police station near campus,
and opened three new outreach centers for about $750,000. etc.
*************************
Phil Parker Internet: pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
Math. Dept., Wichita St. Univ. Bitnet: pparker@twsuvm
I find [in mathematics] a wonderful beauty. This is no science, this is
art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and
where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always
of a crystalline serenity.---Turjan of Miir (Jack Vance)