Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!njin!princeton!njsmu!mccc!pjh From: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Student preparedness Message-ID: <559@mccc.UUCP> Date: 8 Jan 89 04:11:25 GMT References: <52767@pyramid.pyramid.com> <5053@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <56@rpi.edu> <9252@ut-emx.UUCP> <556@mccc.UUCP> <5191@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) Organization: The College On The Other Side of U. S. Route 1 Lines: 45 In article <5191@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) writes: =actually. But I wish more professors had a little more sense (and were =willing to tell the class) about the readings. For instance, telling the =class that something is extremely important, It all depends on the college. Some profs have no concept of teaching being anything except the presentation of material, so "everything" is important. = or that something is going to =be tremendously confusing because the author can't write for his life, Maybe the prof has forgotten how confused he was when he learned the material. Maybe the writing doesn't confuse him = or =that something is considered a classic, but that the back half of the paper =is redundant, or that it's not always necessary to read through certain =parts of papers Think of it as an apprenticeship: "I had to read crap like that to get where I am, and you do, too!" =("Preface. I am a very famous =researcher. This book represents one of my most important works. Although =at the time I wrote this, I couldn't write to save my life, the ideas are very =important. For best results, read as much as you can take, making sure you =hit at least one of the chapters of hand-waving (5, 12, and 17) and then find =yourself a well written review article. Thank you.") Silly. For one, he doesn't know that he can't write to save his life; he writes the same way as the authors he's read! Second, publishers couldn't tolerate that level of honesty. Look, everyone says "To learn C, you read K&R", right? Well, K&R is *not* the right book for say 90% of the people who want to learn C. Should every C programmer read K&R? Yup; it's a classic. :-) The job of the college-level teacher is to help students learn, not to make their lives easier or better, or to train them for jobs. -- Pete Holsberg UUCP: {...!rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh Mercer College CompuServe: 70240,334 1200 Old Trenton Road GEnie: PJHOLSBERG Trenton, NJ 08690 Voice: 1-609-586-4800