Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!nather
From: nather@ut-emx.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <9298@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 89 20:55:28 GMT
References: <52767@pyramid.pyramid.com> <5053@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <56@rpi.edu> <559@mccc.UUCP>
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 25

In article <559@mccc.UUCP>, pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:
> 
> 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. 
> 

I think this is the job of any teacher, at any level from kindergarden up.
Jobs are usually not discussed until college, but if teachers can teach
students how to learn things they need to know, either by attending class,
doing their own studies, asking knowledgable people question, etc., they've
done their job. If a student believes learning is primarily memorizing
facts, then the *teacher* has failed.

Our present educational system works far too much like an adversary process:
I'll tell you things in a lecture, then give you a test to see if you retained
anything.  This is only a tiny fraction of the learning process, and not a
very important one at that.  Hearing is not experiencing.  If you know the
theory of flight through and through, I don't want to fly with you until
you've worked with a real airplane for a while.



-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin