Re: what is understanding

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

> Hugh Haskell said:
> > If my own experience is any indication, understanding came very late in
> the
> > process. Much of what I now understand about physics I gained after I
> > started teaching. Perhaps understanding is more than we should reasonably
> > expect of students, esp. at the introductory level. A successful teacher
> > friend of mine, Pat Canaan of Corvallis, OR, has, for many years held
> that
> > students should learn how to solve the problems first, understanding will
> > come later. While I don't teach based on that proposition, I often think
> > that I ought to. Every year, it seems to me that I end up understanding
> > more new things than my students ever do, and maybe that is the way it
> > should be.
>
> We, who teach the subject and deal with the theory every day, ought to
> "understand" more as time goes by. But what about those who  will never
> take another course. Should we write them off as unworthy of our time?
> We keep telling students that "some day they may need this knowledge" when,
> in fact, for the majority of them that day will never come.
> Understanding is not a black or white matter; it is only shades of gray.
>
>
> Fred Bucheit
>       Nothing has meaning except in relation to something else.
That's why I've never been able to bring myself to abandon the effort, but
more and more, it appears that the key to understanding is nothing short of
time, and time is the one commodity we never have enough of in the
classroom. I also suspect that the ones who do gain some inkling of
understanding in the time we have with them are pretty much limited to the
brightest students and they are the ones who most likely will take the
opportunity to expose themselves to more of the subject as time goes on, so
while our effort bore fruit, it probably had precious little to do with
what we did-they would have come to understanding even if we had done
nothing in particular. Perhaps understanding is the wrong goal for an
introductory class. Maybe we should be aiming at inspiration-to impel the
students to be interested enough to go on until they, by virtue of the time
exposure, reach a level of understanding.


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Hugh Haskell

<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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