Xref: utzoo soc.college:2128 comp.edu:1722 sci.math:5270 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!rutgers!ucsd!nosc!humu!uhccux!lady From: lady@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Lee Lady) Newsgroups: soc.college,comp.edu,sci.math Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity Summary: How to recognize a loser & how not to be one Keywords: losers, responsibility, 90%, crap, 98% Message-ID: <2910@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> Date: 31 Dec 88 19:56:20 GMT References: <4550@homxc.UUCP> <4847@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2082@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <9237@ihlpb.ATT.COM> Reply-To: lady@uhccux.UUCP (Lee Lady) Followup-To: sci.math, alt.flame Distribution: na Organization: University of Hawaii (Mathematics Dept) Lines: 85 Will it really accomplish anything for me to point out again the mirror-image symmetry between the postings from faculty and the postings from students? Almost certainly not. Will that stop me? What do you think! Faculty say: how can we possibly teach anything to these students when they're all such losers, and care about nothing except what's going to be on the next exam? Students say: how can we possibly learn anything when our professors are such losers who don't know how to teach and don't care anyway? In article <9237@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes: > > ... So what happens? Students don't get a >good base on which to build, and they really have to struggle all of >their college life. Will this change? Probably not; universities are >not all that interested in educating Joe Student. > The difference between winners and losers lies in their attitude toward life. If you think of school as something that _happens to_ you, if you honestly believe that by doing what you're told, by doing all your homework and passing all your tests, you will wind up getting an education, then you are playing a loser's game. I've got some harsh news for you, old buddy. Universities are not fair, and never will be. Life is not fair and never will be. If you're going to wait until you're treated fairly before you start winning, you'll wait the rest of your life. I got a teaching evaluation once that was a classic example of the attitude of a loser. In his (or her?) evaluation, this student referred to a really dumb error I'd made on the first day of class, and said "I knew then that the course was going to be worthless, and the rest of the semester proved me right." But s/he STAYED IN THE COURSE THE WHOLE SEMESTER, even though he'd already decided on the first day that he wouldn't get anything out of it. If this example doesn't make what I'm talking about clear, then nothing will. A lot of what you say in your posting is true. The question is: So What? You had a choice, friend. You could have gone to a junior college (community college) for your freshman-sophomore years and got the kind of teaching you complain about not getting at a university. Although it may be too late now, I think you should really seriously think about that choice and decide whether that would have been the better choice for you. If you decide after much thought that that would not have been an acceptable alternative for you, then you should think about how you can better take advantage of those things a university offers which junior colleges cannot. I want to speak a few other harsh truths. To paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon, 90% of what you learn in college is crap. In fact, my guess would be that 98% of the information you are given in college will be of no value to you after you graduate. Probably you're going to refuse to believe that, but accept it as a hypothesis for just one day, and through the filter of that hypothesis think hard about what it is that is really worthwhile about a college education. You may decide to drop out, or you may find some real insight into what universities are really about. Either way, it will no longer be possible for you to continue as a loser. Students love professors who make everything really clear, who make it all easy. But what they're doing is making it easy for you to learn stuff that will probably never be of any use to you anyway, and depriving you of the opportunity to learn something of real value, namely how to figure out difficult material for yourself. (This is not meant to justify professors who make everything so incomprehensible that you can never figure it out!) Another harsh truth: Your professors have no idea in the world what is or is not useful for you to know (except that certain things are necessary as prerequisite material for subsequent courses). Faculty choose material for a course on the basis of what is important *to them*. In particular, most mathematicians tend to like beautiful theories, and their objective is often more aesthetic than practical. But most important of all is the following fundamental triviality: we teach what is known, and we do not teach what is not known. It took me a long time to understand that. When I was a student, I used to think that there was this immense body of truth and that professors selected out what was most important to present to us. I thought that B was less important than A, because A was what was covered in class. None of my classes ever pointed out that the reason for not covering B was simply that B was not known. Okay, enough! Here I am spitting into the wind again. -- Lee Lady lady@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu Dept of Mathematics lee@kahuna.math.hawaii.edu University of Hawaii lady@uhccux.bitnet Honolulu, HI 96822