Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!burl!codas!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching
Message-ID: <2804@killer.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 88 06:54:19 GMT
References: <1759@rayssd.RAY.COM>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 41

in article <1759@rayssd.RAY.COM>, hxe@rayssd.RAY.COM (Heather Emanuel) says:
> will follow.  However, it is THE INSTRUCTOR'S RESPONSIBILITY to
> ensure that the students are learning, not the the students'
   I don't believe that to be true. I think the instructor's responsibility
ends at presenting the material clearly, providing feedback, and all those
other things that make up good teaching. The instructor isn't a babysitter who
has to ram learning down the throats of the class.
   At any public university, you will, in the freshman classes, encounter
people who simply do not have the talent to do the work. This is sad, but,
alas, true. Attribute it to poor public education, supression of intellectual
thought by "passive" entertainment such as television, or other things wrong
in their background, but this is simply a fact that cannot be denied. Laying
the blame at the instructor's feet is unjustified. 

> There is an entire body of knowledge, constantly growing, on
> Learning Theory.  There are courses on Adult Learning Theory, Child
> Learning Theory, Adult Education versus Adult Industrial Training,
> and on and on.  Of all the instructors I know -- at all levels and
> in all disciplines -- maybe one in fifty has had any education in
> these subjects.

While this is all well and true, I don't think lengthy formal education in the
subject is necessary for a college professor to learn what is necessary to
teach mature, interested persons. I may have mentioned the single-semester
course that our English department has, that all graduating PhD.'s in English
are required to take, entitled "Teaching English on the College Level". A
single course like that should suffice for college-level instructing. If we
start requiring a bevy of extraneous material, we may soon get into something
like the current problem with high school science teachers... most of which
know an aweful lot about how to teach, but not much at all about what they're
teaching.  And before you flame me, you better go look at your college's
education catalog... I don't know about there, but here, the "science
education" majors take watered-down science courses, that tell precious little
about why the heck those equations actually work. I took a couple of those
courses... childs play.

--
Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET     Asimov Cocktail,n., A verbal bomb
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg              detonated by the mention of any
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191              subject, resulting in an explosion
Lafayette, LA 70509                    of at least 5,000 words.