twofish-quant said:
Also, I've concluded that universities don't educated because universities *can't* educate. Professors don't teach students. Students teach themselves. The best the university can do is to provide an environment where students can get what they need to teach themselves, and the basic tools to decide what they can do.
I've been thinking about this for a bit; on the face of it it seems obviously correct. But it also implies I'm wasting 33% of my time (since research, teaching, and service equally form the three legs of tenure... yeah right.), so...
The above statement makes an essential point about *learning*, or more specifically, the learning *process*. It makes sense if learning is modeled as an open-loop system. That is, the teacher/book/etc. is a transmitter, the student is the receiver, and the receiver blindly transmits while the receiver simply records. In practice (and in it's worst form), this means teachers stand in front of the class reading from a powerpoint presentation, and students don't ask questions because they are afraid of being exposed as stupid.
During the course of writing my teaching portfolio, I've come to see learning as something involving a lot of interaction between the learner and teacher (and 'teacher' is most generally any source of information). Certainly, a motivated learner will learn more than an unmotivated learner. But the role of teacher is to filter and organize the information for the learner, to critique and challenge the learner, and inspire and motivate the learner.
All of that can be done with a book. What then, is my function? To compliment and supplement the book. Alternatively, the book serves to compliment and supplement my presentation of the material. Which leads to:
chronon said:
Personally, I would support learning one thing in depth to begin with, as in doing so you 'learn how to learn'. But I (like most people on this forum I presume), see learning as something which is lifelong, so that there will be plenty of opportunity to get a broader perspective of your subject.
Learning is certainly a lifelong process! It's also true that the dominant model for scientific training is to constantly narrow one's focus, from broad survey courses to specialized advanced courses, to (in the extreme case) becoming the world expert in something only a dozen people care about (a PhD).
Trying to invert this, by starting off highly specific and integrating additional material, is difficult because without establishing context, which is provided by a broad overview, the student's in-depth knowledge won't integrate with anything else. Let's say, for example, that we drop all introductory Physics survey classes entirely and instead start off directly with (picking a random text off my shelf) Reif's 'fundamentals of statistical and thermal physics'. This is an (advanced) undergraduate textbook, but the mathematical level is fairly low- basic calculus and statistics only. What would happen if we taught this to freshman?
It would be a disaster. Page 1 assumes the reader understands the physical concepts of 'system', 'interaction', 'equations of motion', 'forces', and what quantum mechanics and electrodynamics is all about. Before you claim that a high-school AP physics class covers this adequately (which is mostly true), remember that we are *starting* with in-depth study: we abolished all survey classes. A student needs the context provided by a survey course to understand how the material in Reif's book relates to mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, etc.
To be sure, after I got my PhD I kept learning- and broadened my knowledge base. But that's because, as you said, learning is a lifelong process.
