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Re: Costs of textbooks



At 17:28 -0600 12/13/01, John Clement wrote:

Unfortunately the evidence from PER is that neither idea works very well.
When I went to school the lecture system was defined as: "The system where
the information flows from the notebook of the professor to the notebook of
the student without going through either mind."

Probably not an unreasonable way of looking at lectures. Think back
on how the lecture idea began. It all happened at the very beginning
of the ideas of universities, before Gutenburg and his printing
press, or the invention of moveable type. Then no one could afford
books, so a scholar would gather a group of students about him, and,
for a fee, would read them his book. They would write it down as
dictation, and at the end of the "course" they would have their own
copy of his book. At the time it was an effective way to get your
work out to the public, such as it was. And the students could, for a
reasonable cost, accumulate a library and thus ultimately become a
scholar himself.

That was about 700 years ago. Some ideas are really hard to get rid of.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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