Xref: utzoo sci.math:5193 sci.physics:5258 comp.edu:1624 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!uunet!muddcs!sellswor From: sellswor@muddcs.Claremont.EDU (Scott Ellsworth) Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu Subject: Now wait a minute! was Re: How to beat the high cost of text books! Message-ID: <1544@muddcs.Claremont.EDU> Date: 18 Dec 88 06:52:16 GMT References: <2219@cbnews.ATT.COM> <684@stech.UUCP> <17553@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <17738@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1124@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> <846@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> Reply-To: sellswor@muddcs.UUCP (Scott Ellsworth) Distribution: na Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA Lines: 75 Sorry, we the students are not guilty. Look at all of the possible factors that could influence the price of a textbook. The only one I can think of that the students directly control is the actual purchase decision. Do I or do I not buy the REQUIRED text for this class. That is the only choice I have. You might want to consider this before assigning two or three texts for a class, each of which costs approximately eight to ten hours at student wages. Nothing is free at a college bookstore. Now, lets examine the idea of time. An engineer friend of mine was recently told by a project coordinator that engineering students nowadays are lazy. They have not memorized enough tables. (integrals, transforms, properties, etc.) My friend asked this person what should be dropped to give the time for a two or three unit class in memorizing things which can be looked up in tables. The person's response was that nobody can earn an engineering degree in four years. Perhaps he is right. I do know that I am out of cash to pay for any more schooling, so if they want more out of me, they are going to have give it to me first. I am hardly unique, and thus a program requiring an extra several years for idiot work falls flat on its face. Lets take on on last concept. Why is it that a student may run out of time, or may study to a course? Look at it from a student's point of view. I only have 24 hours in a day, of which I need to slkeep about 8. If I sleep less than this, I am a zombie, so please don't bother suggesting it. Now, in the remaining sixteen hours, I have to learn whatever I need to get that day, attend appropriate classes, and perform whatever actions are needed for my own mental, emotional, and physical survival. This means I operate under a time constraint. If a professor tells me that I must know the following material , then I will learn that set of concepts as best I can. The other things? They are ignored. Why? Because the professor has told me what is important. He or she has used a much larger (I hope) store of knowledge than mine to tell me what parts of this are critical, what parts are merely useful, and what parts the textbook author could have left out. Enter the purist who claims that all of is important. Perhaps this person is correct. Remember that any given student will learn a certain amount of merterial in a semester. Of need, if you add a new topic, I must slight another, perhaps in another class, to learn this new subject. Now, the purist has just told me, the student, that I must learn all of a subject, that it is all equally important. By doing this, the purist has forced me to guess at what is important, and what I shall concentrate on. As much as some professors would like to believe otherwise, the students have a limited amount of time, energy, and attention. Thus, the time I spend trying to understand enough of the subject to know what I need to know is effectively wasted. It is not put to good use in learning a part of the subject, and the general ideas I learn are not specific enough to teach me anything. I do not posess the general knowledge of the field needed to integrate these disjointed pieces. Thus, we end up with a student who gets a poor grade, because the professor has refused to reveal what _arbitrary and subjective_ standard will be used for grading, and the student failed to outguess the professor. The student also does not learn the material in a way that will be conducive to learning more (although possibly, the subject is so disorganized that there is no such thing as a good preparation, and no topic is important enough to be more important than another. If I thought that this was true for physics, then I would be a different major. I don't like wasting my time with trivia. To date, physics has rarely been composed of such) If it is true that there is more material than can be learned in one semester, then break the course up. If you can't do it, then blame your administration, your culture, or a society that feels that education and work must be kept seprate; blame a culture without the wit to realize that _every_ field grows, and that continuing education is a route to qualified people. I remain.. Scott Ellsworth uunet!muddcs!sellswor sellswor@muddcs.claremont.edu sellswor@jarthur.claremonet.edu bitnet:SELLSWORTH@HMCVAX STANDARD DISCLAIMER, ETC. ETC. ETC.