-----Original Message-----
From: phys-lOn Behalf Of Richard Hake
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 3:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Mary Burgan's Defense of Lecturing
.. .[[[But in the introduction to the 1963 edition, Feynman wrote:
"The question, if course, is how well this experiment has succeeded.
My own point of view - which, however, does not seem to be shared with
most of the people who worked with the students - is pessimistic. I
don't think I did very well by the students. When I look at the way the
majority of students handled the problems on the examinations, I think
the system is a failure."]]]. . .
On the other hand, John Hubisz (2007) wrote: "I have heard this story
many times . . .[that the Feynman lectures were failures for the
education of freshmen]. . ., but have also heard a contrary view from
some of those who actually took the course. I suggest reading Matthew
Sands' comments in . . . .["Feynman's Tips on Physics [Feynman et al.
(2005c)]. . where he suggests otherwise having attended most of the
lectures."
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"Around June 1963, after the second year of lectures had been completed,
I was in my office assigning the grades for the final examinations when
Feynman dropped in to say goodbye before leaving town (perhaps to go to
Brazil). He asked how the students had performed on the exam. I said I
thought pretty well. He asked what the average grade was and I told him
something like 65%, as I recall. His response was, "Oh, that's terrible;
they should have done better than that. I am a failure." I tried to
dissuade him of this idea and pointed out that the average grade was
very arbitrary-it depended on factors such as the difficulty of the
problems given, the grading method used, and so on. In addition, we
usually tried to make the average sufficiently low so there would be
some spread in grades to provide a reasonable curve for the assignment
of letter grades-an attitude, incidentally, that I wouldn't approve of
today. I said I thought that many of the students had clearly gotten a
great deal out of the class. He was not persuaded.
I then told him that the publication of the lectures was proceeding
apace and wondered whether he would like to provide a preface. The idea
interested him, but he was short of time. I suggested that he dictate
his preface into the Dictaphone on my desk. So, still depressed over the
average grade, he recorded the first draft of "Feynman's Preface," which
you will find in each volume of the Lectures. In it, he says, "I don't
think I did very well by the students." I have often regretted that I
had arranged for him to make a preface in this way, because I do not
think that it was a very considered judgment. And I fear that his
statement has been used by many teachers as an excuse for not trying out
the Lectures with their students."
Regarding attendance by regular students:
"In a special preface to the 1989 commemorative issue of The Feynman
Lectures on Physics, published one year after Feynman's death, David
Goodstein and Neugebauer wrote that "as the course wore on, attendance
by the registered students started dropping alarmingly."2 I don't know
where they got that information. And I wonder what evidence they had to
report that "many of the students dreaded the class." Goodstein was not
at Caltech at that time. Neugebauer, part of the crew who worked on the
course, would sometimes joke that there were no undergraduate students
left in the lecture hall-only grad students. His old joke may have
colored his memory. I sat in the back of the hall during most of the
lectures, and my memory-of course, dimmed by the years-is that perhaps
20% or so of the students did not bother to attend. Such a number is not
unusual for a large lecture class, and I do not remember that anyone
found that alarming. Although a few students in my recitation section
were not completely happy with the class, most were involved and excited
by the lectures, though I would be surprised if there were not some who
dreaded the homework assignments."
It's also important to consider all that Feynman wrote in his preface,
including:
"... the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct
individual relationship between a student and a good teacher - a
situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the
things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much
by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that
are assigned. But in our modern times we have so many students to teach
that we have to try to find some substitute for the ideal."
Which I think has been the focus of much of the Physics Education and
inquiry based science effort.
Larry Woolf
General Atomics
www.ga.com
www.sci-ed-ga.org