Re: grades, pass/fail etc.

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Thomas O'Neill wrote in part:
> ... While I was certainly interested in my Chemistry
> classes, my desire to take History (especially in my senior year when I had
> more intellectually stimulating things to do) was minimal, if not actually
> negative.  By the same token, large blocks of my Chemistry classes (even in
> my major classes) were taken up with engineers, pre-medical students and
> other science students who were not interested in Chemistry beyond the
> requirements of their program.

Bravo.  Well said.

>         So in your own Physics classes, how many students are required to be
> there?  To expect that all students in a class are motivated by a love of or
> even an interest in Physics is not supported the data.

Right.

Teaching the ones who want to be there is a jillion times
easier than teaching the ones who are only there because
it's required.

====

Let's see if we can pursue this idea a little further.
Several questions immediately come up.
  1) At the highest level:  Was it really a good idea to
     require course X (where X=history or X=physics or
     whatever)?
  2) If so, _why_ was it required?
  3) Why was it not intellectually stimulating?  Would it
     have been stimulating to someone majoring in X, or was
     it just poorly taught?

These are not rhetorical questions.  I am not suggesting
that they have obvious answers.

>  Don't even get me started on acquiring credentials to teach....

The same questions apply (just set X=pedagogy).  I
was incensed by some of the mickey-mouse hoops I had to
jump through ... but on the other side of the same coin
I would have cheerfully paid quite a lot to have somebody
teach me _real_ teaching skills.

Teachers think required courses bring out the worst in
students.  Students think required courses bring out the
worst in teachers.  The worst-case scenario is where a
particular course is required;  things are much improved
if there is a somewhat-broader requirement that can be
fulfilled by any of N different courses.  (Market forces
get rid of the worse abuses, even if the market is only
partially free.)

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need required courses,
because all the courses would be so stimulating that
students (even non-majors) would sign up in droves.
That ideal is not 100% achievable, but it's a goal
worth striving for.  The question needs to be asked:
if students are not spontaneously signing up, WHY NOT?

One theory behind required courses is that The Powers
That Be want the students to take a well-rounded set
of courses.  There is (as always) a continuum of
shades of gray between what is strictly required and
what is strictly spontaneous.  I suspect for most
students the middle ground is best
 -- It doesn't work to take the Pollyanna approach,
    assuming the students will spontaneously take
    all the right courses.  They're students (duh!)
    so they don't spontaneously know what will be
    important in later life.  Somebody needs to
    explain what'll be important, and why.
 -- The opposite extreme is the fascist approach,
    where things are required just because they're
    required.

The worse-case scenario is where requirements are set,
textbooks are written, and courses are taught, all by
people who have no idea what's really important.  That
happens all too often.  I remember in high school we
had a substitute geometry teacher who actually made
light of his own subject, saying in all candor that
he didn't know what the geometry formulas were useful
for.  He said he'd never needed to paint a
parallelogram-shaped wall, nor ever bought a
parallelogram-shaped carpet.  That shocked me.  I'm
still shocked.  IMHO a teacher's first duty is to
explain why the subject is important.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.