Feynman (was pedagogy)

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

Hi all-
        I sent John D's remarks about Feynman to a colleague who was once
Feynman's TA.  Here are John's remarks followed by my friend's comments:
John wrote:
Richard Feynman interacting with undergraduates.  He
> was known for being a bit gruff with colleagues who
> didn't know what was going on, but he was more than
> patient with freshmen and sophomores who didn't know
> what was going on.
>
> When he was working problems at the blackboard, he
> didn't just show the solution.  He commented on the
> method of solution as he went along, which is where
> this story makes contact with the subject of this
> message.  He would often say "At this point, you
> may be tempted to try XXX, but that's a trap.  You
> can recognize traps of this sort by noticing ....."
>
> I was quite struck by that.  It was not even a case
> of RPF "remembering" what it was like to be a student,
> because he was so $#@! smart that he had probably
> never in his life fallen into the sort of trap he was
> discussing.  The point is that he took his job as
> teacher very seriously, and he was discussing things
> at the students' level.  He made it his business to
> find out what the students found easy and what they
> found hard and confusing.  He did this partly by just
> plain talking to students, and partly by looking at
> their homework papers (even though he had graders who
> did most of the grading).
__________________________________________________________________
The comment:
yes, of course, discussion and method are even superior to the  actual
solution
to the problem in the first place...... after all, the problem itself is
there
to teach you methodology, and not the answer....
the scientific method....

as for feynman, i'll disagree: much of the time he was talking to himself,
or
some alter ego of himself,
around 11 yrs old, or his son, etc.... so he did not second guess the
naivete
of
his  freshmen,
smart as he was: he Became a little kid in method acting and did ask all
the
naive and stupid questions
himself, fast and cleverly to be sure, but he asked them, and got
confused, and
got back, and
kicked himself and asked again, and backtracked and asked even more basic
questions.....
totally genuinely, and not as part of a pedagogical show.... and that's
what
stays with you if
you watched him: that it is OK to buzz and jump and backtrack and explore
improbable alleys,
mostly blind, but sometimes pure feynman paradoxical!


                                                Regards,
                                                        Jack


--
"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
                General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
                just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley