Re: lecturing et cetera

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

> On Sat, 02 Sep 2000 15:53:51 -0400 John Gastineau wrote:
> >
> >  Even teachers who get rave reviews and win
> > teaching awards don't do very well at all if all they do is lecture.

At 04:50 PM 9/2/00 -0400, Herbert H Gottlieb responded:
> Was this also true of Feynman's lectures????   I don't think so

I'm not 100% sure what Herb is asking/suggesting -- but if anybody thinks
that Physics 1 consisted of somebody just delivering the Feynman lectures
in front of a bunch of students ... well, that's not right.  It wasn't done
that way in 1961-62, or any other time.

Read Feynman's preface and Leighton's foreword for some hint of the
resources that were brought to bear:  I count 12 full professors.  There
must have been over a dozen graduate teaching assistants in on it, too --
and you don't get to be Feynman's or Leighton's grad student by being lazy
or dumb.  In addition to the in-class demonstrations (including such things
as the air track, which was invented as part of this adventure) there was a
hands-on lab course with yet another cadre of professors and TAs.

And I'll let you in on a little trick:  Feynman didn't just lecture;  he
graded some of the homework sets himself.  But but but you say, that's TA
work;  why is a super-genius spending time on that?  Well, it turns out he
cared a whole lot, and he didn't want merely to incant true things, but
rather to explain things in a way that made contact with his audience.  He
knew that students were likely to be confused about things that he
personally had never been confused about, and one way he could tell where
the students were coming from was to see what mistakes they made on the
homework.

Also note that Feynman had a very highly selected audience.  These were
kids who had already demonstrated that they were committed to math and
science before they ever showed up.

There was also a strong tradition of upperclassmen helping their freshman
housemates with the homework in the middle of the night.

Finally note that Feynman considered that course an experiment -- a failed
experiment.  A substantial fraction of the class came down with
brain-blisters and were unable to keep up with the course.

I love those lectures for what they are -- but let's not pretend they're
something they're not.