Ludwik has (again) started an interesting thread, which I will paraphrase
into "Why are so many of our students so passive?"
Mike Monce has already pointed out one reason, that they are seldom
encouraged to examine the world around them with either a sense of
curiosity or one of wonder. Simulations and special effects are more
spectacular, so why play with something so dull as a magnifier? I saw a
recent cartoon (Shoe?) in which a computer game was so close to the real
world that the "student" found it boring, prefering instead the "virtual
reality" game.
I propose another aspect of their conditioning, that they have been trained
to expect a particular kind of "education" which loosely translates as "I
will tell you the answer before I ask the question, and will only ask those
questions for which I have already given the answer." Poor Ludwik asked
them a question for which he hadn't told them the answer!
George Spagna **********************************************
Department of Physics * "Spoon-feeding, no matter how attractive *
Randolph-Macon College * at 1300 hours on a Friday afternoon, *
P.O. Box 5005 * does little to encourage *
Ashland, VA 23005-5505 * a free-thinking mind." *
* *
phone: (804) 752-7344 * - Elizabeth Timoney (1994) *
FAX: (804) 752-4724 * - New Scientist, Vol 142, p 1926 *
e-mail: gspagna@rmc.edu ********************************************** http://www.rmc.edu/~gspagna/gspagna.html