Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!ems!srcsip!shankar From: shankar@srcsip.UUCP (Subash Shankar) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching Message-ID: <794@altura.srcsip.UUCP> Date: 15 Jan 88 14:01:38 GMT References: <2144@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <115@mccc.UUCP> <3469@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <1759@rayssd.RAY.COM> <126@mccc.UUCP> Reply-To: shankar@europa.UUCP (Subash Shankar) Organization: Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN Lines: 36 Posted: Fri Jan 15 08:01:38 1988 In article <126@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg) writes: >In article <1759@rayssd.RAY.COM> hxe@rayssd.RAY.COM (Heather Emanuel) writes: >>I don't know how many times I have talked with an instructor who >>says something like, "But they just won't ask questions!" Of >>*course* they won't ask questions if they haven't got the foggiest >>notion what's going on! If the students in your class are not >>asking questions, are not curious or excited about the subject >>matter, that's your problem, not theirs. >>... >Or perhaps they are afraid to ask questions because their peers seem to >understand the material. ... Or, perhaps, they fear negative feedback from their professors, or even other classmates. I have had one too many class (undergraduate) in which the professor believes that all undergraduates are ignorami (or whatever the plural of ignoramus is), and any question they ask is by default a stupid question and a waste of class time. These professors typically look aghast at your stupidity, and then answer by reiterating their last 10 prepared vu-graphs, except at a slower pace. Even worse, there is criticism from other students who happen to understand the material and consider the questioner to be wasting class time, even when the question is one clearly bothering a majority of the class. Interestingly, the questioner often has the same feeling when somebody else asks a question about something he understands. -- Subash Shankar Honeywell Systems & Research Center ihnp4!srcsip!shankar