Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ucsd!rutgers!njin!princeton!njsmu!mccc!pjh
From: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity
Keywords: losers, responsibility, 90%, crap, 98%
Message-ID: <548@mccc.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 89 13:54:17 GMT
References: <4550@homxc.UUCP> <4847@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <542@mccc.UUCP> <9208@ut-emx.UUCP>
Reply-To: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg)
Distribution: na
Organization: The College On The Other Side of U. S. Route 1
Lines: 31

In article <9208@ut-emx.UUCP> nather@ut-emx.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
=In my view, the difference between good teaching and bad teaching is exactly
=this.  A majority of students (and many faculty) make no distinction
=between memorizing facts and having a basic understanding of why the facts
=are true, and how we know they're true.  Critical, deductive thinking seems
=rarely to be taught except by accident.  Why?

IMHO:
(1)  It's hard to teach people how to think, especially when they think
they have been doing it for 17-?? years.

(2)  It's hard for them to learn, after the laziness that's been brought
on by the instant gratifiers -- TV, Cliff Notes, etc.

(3)  It's hard to grade tests that test thinking, and very time-consuming.

(4)  Most teachers do critical thinking "intuitively" and are thus not
qualified to teach it.

=I won't get started on multiple-choice testing ...

It's possible to write good MC tests.  The benefit is that they are easy
to grade.  But it's probably harder to make up good ones.  When I have a
good one, I collect it from the students after returning it for
discussion.  That way, I can use it again in the future.

-- 
Pete Holsberg                   UUCP: {...!rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Mercer College			CompuServe: 70240,334
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