From: "JACK L. URETSKY (C) 1996; HEP DIV., ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB, ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@hep.anl.gov>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 17:30:15 -0600 (CST)
Dear Roger-
The following remark in your posting caught my particular
attention:
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(I don't want to give Harvard
graduates too many accolades. In a previous posting, some weeks ago, I
pointed out that my undergraduate economics course was taught by a person
with a new Harvard doctoral degree and was the most poorly taught course
that I have ever experienced.)
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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