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From: mrk@wuphys.UUCP (Mark R. Kaufmann)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness (was Re: Student and ... (was Rising cost ...))
Message-ID: <608@wuphys.UUCP>
Date: 15 Dec 88 20:00:31 GMT
References: <1131@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> <1887@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <1057@l.cc.purdue.edu> <776@afit-ab.arpa> <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: mrk@wuphys.UUCP (Mark R. Kaufmann)
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Organization: Dept. of Physics, Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO
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In article <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) writes:
>I might also add that due to the incompetence of certain individuals at certain
>schools I have attended (most notably high school), most of what I learned
>was outside of the classroom.  And due to the more competent teaching
>I'm experiencing now, the trend is reversed.  And I should note that the
>students are not remarkably different, nor the class size.  But now all my
>classes are elective, and most of them are seminars or similarly structured.
>                                              -Dan
>p.s. i'm hoping someone else will take on your remarks about television

I don't know which kind of high school or college you attended; I
attended public schools in K-12 and a private university from then on.
My experience is that the students were VERY different in the two cases.
The major difference I see between these is that in the first case
there was a lot of, for lack of a better phrase, "dead weight."
That is, there were many students for whom school literally
was a day care center, and who simply refused to advance their minds
in any way whatsoever, and not only that, insisted on repeatedly disrupting
the classroom so that even those who wanted to learn were sometimes hindered.
The way I see it, a teacher simply cannot conduct a course when
there are both "geniuses" and "dead weight" in the same classroom.
What is called for, in my opinion, is segregation of students from day one
according to their ability AND WILLINGNESS (VERY important) to learn.
The latter seems much easier to guage than the former, though.
Those who are able, willing, and ready to learn should not have to be
dragged down by those who simply need a babysitter during the day.
My classes were segregated in grades 1-3 (somehow--I didn't pay much
attention to the methods used at the time!).
But teaching children who were able and willing to learn in separate classrooms
and at a faster speed than those who were either unable or unwilling (or both)
then became unfashionable and "elitist," and from then on, except for
_ADVANCED_ elective classes in high school, there was almost always
"dead weight" in my classes--and of course, the rate of learning
was determined by the slowest student(s) in the classroom. Comments/criticisms?
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Mark R. Kaufmann
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Internet: mrk@wuphys.wustl.edu
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