🚀 go-pugleaf

goss@micor.ocunix.on.ca (Timothy D. Goss) writes:

>I want to make some comments about the previous poster who claimed that profs
>in university don't know how to teach and blames them not the students...

>Professors shouldn't teach.  If you go to university, IMHO, you don't want to
>be taught, you want to learn.  The onus is entirely on the student.  Having a
>professor spoon feed you an entire course accomplishes nothing.  Your prof is
>a source of knowledge, a guide not a teacher.  Anyone who doesn't want to 
>learn should not be at university.  If you want to be spoonfed useless drivel
>then go to college (yes virginia there is a difference) and learn nothing.

I agree that you shouldn't go to University if you don't want  to
learn.   However,  profs  should  teach.  They have to pass their
knowledge and experience on to the next generation if we are,  as
a  society,  going  to progress in various fields of academia.  A
genius prof who can't communicate with other people in a coherent
fashion is useless to the world.

The onus is not entirely on the student because profs can and  do
make  it  very difficult for students to learn in some cases.  If
the prof is going to be a source of knowledge for more than a few
individuals,  he/she is going to have to know how to lecture to a
group of  people.   Hand-holding  is  not  necessary  but  giving
informative  and  interesting  lectures  is.  

Part of your above point depends on your definition  of  'teach'.
Maybe  I  should  look  it  up  in  the dictionary but to me, 'to
teach' means to pass on knowledge or  insight  to  someone  else.
That   definition   doesn't specify   the  method,  so  it  could
be  something  other  than  lecturing,  such  as  video,  written
papers  to  be  read by  students, or some other indirect method.
But the point I'd like to make is that the  professor  should  be
held  responsible   for   communicating  the   knowledge   he has
researched to others who are interested in  knowing   it--it   is
up   to   them   to   take    that   communicated information and
learn it.
-- 
Jerry Penner   jpenne@ee.ualberta.ca