Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

RE: Not about business models



At 5:43 PM on 12/11/96, <phys-l@mailer.uwf.edu> wrote:

My question is, by what standard was this a poorly taught course?
One of the best courses I ever took, looking back from a vantage
point of 40+ years time lapse, was a modern algebra course from a guy
named Whitehead (no, not THAT Whitehead!). At the beginning of the
hour he would start writing on the blackboard and lecturing to the
blackboard (inaudibly). He would stop at the end of the hour.
We students would just sit and copy his notes.
Why was it one of the best courses? Because every night I
had to sit down with the notes and struggle until I understood what the guy
was saying (or, rather, writing).
My point? Learning is a student responsibility. Or, to quote
Feynman, "What I cannot create I do not understand." The student's
responsibility is to learn to create, and there is very little that the
teacher can do to facilitate that learning.
Regards,
Jack
Good point. I had a similar experience with Analysis 1,2,&3. The notes
were excellent...I still have them, and the prof was extremely demanding,
but little learning went on in the classroom. Every student needs to have
a few "bad" profs by this standard so they learn to learn from books. None
of us probably strive to be the bad prof--it's nice to have an engaging
classroom--but I certainly expect 98% of the learning to go on between
classes.

Chip