Hi all-
I recently received an inquiry about my calculus text. I thought
that my response might be of general interest.
Dear ____,
Thank you for your inquiry. The book is still a work in progress.
Chapter XIV is finished, but needs rewriting. It is temporarily on hold
while I finish a paper on the recent RHIC experiments.
I did give permission to one fresh PhD teaching a college calculus
course to use some of the early chapters of the book, with disappointing
results. The disappointment was that the book is carefully designed to
minimize teacher lecturing and maximize student reading, study, and
problem solving. There are no solutions in the back of the book; the
solutions are buried in the text for further reading. The teacher I refer to
discarded completely, as I understand it, the self-study aspects of the
text, with the result that I got no feedback on my approach.
So, to be blunt, I'm open to working with teachers who, like many
of us veterans, have learned that our charismatic lectures do not lead to
enhanced learning on the part of our enthralled sudents, and have set
about teaching students how to teach themselves.
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