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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity
Keywords: responsibility, victim, complaining, environmental variables,  education as fascism, professors != missionaries
Message-ID: <18146@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 Dec 88 03:01:57 GMT
References: <1131@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> <1887@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <4526@homxc.UUCP> <2799@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
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Organization: EECS, UC Davis
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In article <2799@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lady@uhccux.UUCP (Lee Lady) writes:

>>I was of the opinion then, and I am still of the opinion now, that the
>>majority of students in the general sciences courses are for the most
>>part just plain apathetic.  Many students approach mathematics as a 
>>subject to be passed and buried as quickly as possible; 

>What *is* my responsibility is to give my students the opportunity to learn 
>as much mathematics as they *want* to learn, and to show the ones who are 
>receptive why it's worth learning, and occasionally to sneak up and catch 
>the interest of a few of those who never realized before that they were 
>capable of being interested in mathematics, because they had never before seen 
>that mathematics is beautiful.  

Coupling these two comments together, the following anecdote might be
of interest:

A friend of mine was teaching a calculus-for-the-life-sciences class.
In one of the first lectures, he had carefully derived the slope of
a tangent line for a given function at a point, as a limit of difference
quotients.  After class, a student came up to him and said, "That was
beautiful, just beautiful ..."  My friend was thinking, "Well, at least
there is ONE pre-med major whose interested in more than just a grade."
But then the student finished the rest of his sentence, saying, "... but
it would have been much nicer for us if you had just given us the answer
without the derivation"!!!!  :-)

    Norm