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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <19147@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 16 Jan 89 21:57:40 GMT
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Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
Organization: EECS, UC Davis
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In article <4392@teklds.CAE.TEK.COM> dant@mrloog.LA.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque) writes:
>George W. Leach writes:

>>      Another factor may the cultural differences between students and the
>>instructor.  In many countries the instructor lectures and the students
>>hang on every word, paying maximum attention. 

*Or, quite likely, taking dictation without understanding a word said.
*Richard Feynman in _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_ discussed his
*experiences in Brazil.  He was giving a lecture on polarization and
*stopped to ask a simple question on something he'd just said.  Not a
*single student understood the question.  The problem was that he'd
*asked them to apply his lecture to a real world situation.  The
*students could repeat back what he'd just said but didn't really
*comprehend a thing.

*Brazilian students evidently succeed by writing down everything the
*teacher says, memorizing it, and regurgitating it back on the final.  No
*original, creative, synthetic or analytic thought is required.  I have a
*feeling that Brazil is not unique in this kind of scholasticism.

True.  Again, East Asia is an example of this.  In Chinese, there is
a phrase which translates to "stuff the duck," meaning rote memorization,
and this seems to pervade education in East Asian countries.

Anecdote:  A year ago, I taught a course in networks, and I gave a
very free-form assignment involving a simulation study.  I said to
the students, "YOU pose the problem to be studied, YOU design a
simulation experiment to study it, YOU decide how to present the
results, etc.."  The students worked in teams of 2.  One particular
team consisted of one student from the top school in Taiwan and the
other from a top school in China.  After a few days, this team asked 
me during lecture, "What do you want the output to consist of?"  
I answered by repeating what I had said before, i.e. this problem 
is free-form, use your own creativity for both posing the problem and 
studying it, it's all up to you, etc., etc.  The team replied, "Sure, 
we understand that, but what do you want the output to consist of?"  :-)
[The rest of the class laughed, though some of those who laughed suffered
from a similar problem.]

   Norm