🚀 go-pugleaf

So many points, so little time...

     I have to apologize for a couple of misunderstandings I created by not
fully explaining a couple of points in my last posting.  I was trying to be
brief and lost some clarity.
     First let me clear up the business about the Pacific Ocean.  I was
suspicious of some of the research that showed the incredible ignorance of
US students.  So I did what my science education taught me to do-- I
designed an experiment.  We quizzed some high school students with some of
the questions from some of the reports, for example: When did the Civil War
occur?  Identify the Pacific Ocean on this map.  and so forth.  We then sat
down with students and went over the questions they missed.  Being careful
not to lead them, we simply said, "C'mon. Where is the Pacific, really?"
They did then locate it and then give one of the explanations I described
before.  Not every student missed all the questions for those reasons, but
based on that project, I get the impression that some of these surveys
overstate students' incompetence.  I simply said to be careful about citing
these studies.
        Second, the 25 years of experience I referred to was as a student
through a Ph.D. program that included graduate courses in nuclear
engineering.  My point was that I cannot remember a course where
independent thinking was independent of the teacher's preconceived correct
line of thinking.  Simanek asked about the schools where I have experience
which were a semi-suburban district (250 graduates per year); a small,
rural school, a staff position with a major research institution, and a
teaching position at a four-year liberal arts college.

     I think Davis, Simanek, and I actually agree that there are classrooms
where academic aims are weakened in the name of self-esteem needs.  The
contrast I see is, as I said, that I hear in their claims that teachers
know better but choose to change their teaching to be warm and fuzzy.  I
simply contend that these teachers don't understand self-esteem research.
The difference is that the nature of the problem dictates a different
solution.  The former requires that teacher's philosophies be changed (very
difficult) mine supposes that a better understanding of how to implement
learning theory will do.  I referred to "Stand and Deliver" because it is a
docudrama recounting a story of a teacher who set high expectations for
inner city kids to learn calculus and then helped them to reach those
goals.  That built true self esteem.

     I didn't omit subject matter mastery because it doesn't matter, but
rather because it is not within the scope of the courses I was describing.
That's another topic.  Even in methods classes, some students don't get it.
Every semester I have one or two students who fail my classes.  But I
don't look at those who do fail as growing where (s)he is not wanted, that
is, a weed.
     I also do not think our definitions of creative thinking are really
that far apart.  I wrote and teach a course that draws on psychology,
sociology, mathematics, biology, and other science to assess claims about
the natural world.  This is the kind of course that is criticized (and will
be shot at by some people on this net, if I'm any judge) because we don't
go deeply into any subject.  We look at issues from alien abduction claims
to repressed memory and many others.  We see how biology informs psychology
and how mathematics helps sociologists model human behavior among other
things.  Simanek's definition of independent thinking could be a statement
of the rationale of the course.  I believe students need a blend of
experiences, some where they go deep into, for example, physics and others
that integrate subjects.
      As far as whether my classes are warm and fuzzy, I gave an e-mail
address to some of my students so that they can post to this net without me
being able to trace back who said what.  My perception is that my teaching
methods classes give students enough knowledge, positive attitude and
self-assessment skill to go into classrooms and make good teachers out of
themselves.  Let's see if they have anything to say.  One already warned me
that I may have overstated class attendance.  I tried to say that most
students (I estimate 80% or more) come to class most of the time (missing
1-2 classes per semester).

     I honestly don't know how we compare today's students with those of 20
or 30 years ago and I'm not sure the exercise moves us ahead.  Society
certainly has changed and the schools do not seem to know whether they are
to drive society or to serve it.  It is an unfortunate outcome of
evolutionary processes that today's organism is a product of yesterday's
selection pressures.  Schools are products of human cultural evolution and
certainly show evidence for designs that solved problems that no longer
exist. If the environment changes rapidly the evolving organism may be
unable to keep up.  Of course when that happens the result is extinction.
Hmm, maybe we are in trouble.

     I thank Donald Simanek for his positive point that teachers need,
"specific strategies for encouraging it, nurturing it, and developing
it..." ("it" being transfer of knowledge, independent thought and personal
responsibility).  Further, I realize not all schools are the same in these
regards and that there are very real problems.  If I overstated from my
experience I now admit the limited generalizability of my results.  (I'll
admit to overstating from my experience if Davis will admit to same.) (No
wait-- I'll go first.  I admit it :-)

P.S. for Donald Simanek (Personal, don't anybody else read this.)  I assume
LHUP is Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.  I did a summer institute
there in 1981.  It was an interesting place.  The institute was in
multidisciplinary ways to teach energy concepts.

Dennis Showers
Blake C, Room 205
One College Circle
Geneseo, NY  14454

716/245-5255