Xref: utzoo comp.edu:1667 sci.physics:5301
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <1750@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 21 Dec 88 22:05:43 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <1988Dec16.153701.8316@cs.rochester.edu> <97@microsoft.UUCP> <502@mccc.UUCP> <9238@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: comp.edu
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 40

In article <9238@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes:
>[followups to comp.edu]
>
>In article <502@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>
>>However, most people find that their time is
>>spent more effectively in the company of a person who understands how to
>>teach them what they are to learn.
>
[...]
>It is not even a necessary condition, let alone a sufficient condition,
>to know the material in order to teach it.  If you look at professional
>videotapes made for teaching, you will notice that most of the good
>ones have actors, not professors, doing the teaching (you can usually
>tell the difference on technical terms).

You can tell in a more obvious way.

One never asks questions of a videotape (except the ones my boss shows
in his classes, and then he's standing there to answer), and the
information being taught in higher-level courses changes almost too
rapidly for the professors who have the degrees and can understand how
the new information changes the interpretation of all the old
information.

The depth of understanding of the person who answers the questions is
proportional (I daresay more than directly, more like exponentially) to
the resultant understanding of the person who asks them.

Ob. Physics Lecture:
There are millions of good souls in the primary schools of this nation
who teach and truly believe that Ben Franklin discovered electricity.
I can't advocate replacing them all with physicists, but could they all
handle the change in their teaching of the subject in the way a
physicist would?

				--Blair
				  "And I bet it's AFTRA rules that
				   keep the professors out of the
				   videotapes."