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Who shall be there? was: Re: Feynman (was pedagogy)



"I also need to point out that I used it most in my second year classes,
where the students were more serious, and were there because they
wanted to be rather than because they had to be."




HH has reminded me of a problem I've occasionally superficially thought
about for some time. My experience teaching the last 1/4 Chem. at a
local HS occasioned more serious thought. [most of the students were
angry at the required presence; the others told me they enjoyed being
and were "there".]


It involves such questions as why are there public schools with required
attendance; what must the students be taught; what is the social
purpose; what is the point of having other than elective courses in
college, or even HS's; et cet.?

As you know my answers are a bit extreme; what are yours?

bc


p.s. replying to HH's question: I've generally had difficulty
presenting to large groups. Instead I've had the most success (as
measured by my pleasure and the reaction of the students) in labs and
demonstrations where it's more like catechism than lecture. Without
knowing it, I was using the methods touted by many on this list. I
don't like the anonymity of lecture.





Hugh Haskell wrote:

At 22:47 -0500 5/8/04, John Clement wrote:


Well, what evidence is there that modeling mistakes produces better
problem solving skills? Feynman certainly had little evidence for
his methods, and he called his lectures failures.



I am currently reading Rudolf Peierls memoir, "Bird of Passage"
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) and this morning I ran
across the following paragraph (pp. 28-29) about his student days in
Munich:

"I also attended lectures in mathematics. I remember particularly
those by Caratheodory, a charming Greek, whose lectures were not very
well organized. On one occasion he came into the lecture room and
said, 'Yesterday I thought of a proof for the theorem I want to prove
today, but on the way to the university I realized that it was



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On the other hand, different students learn in different ways, and
not all teaching methods will be effective with all students. It is
probably important for students to have teachers with different
styles, so they can get used to the differences that they will be
forced to accommodate to in their learning careers. But teachers
should be aware of the fact that no one method will be effective with
all their students, and even if one find a method that works well
with more students than others, there will be some quite capable
students who will not respond to that method and may not do as well
as they could with a different approach.

I look forward to the reactions of the varied personalities resident
on this list.

Hugh



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