RE: Education (Was Re: Techwriting After the Boom)

[John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com>]

Keith...that's all cute and humorous, but I happen to agree with the
student. Why is it that we qualify degrees by having to go through X hoops?
Shouldn't we instead quantify degrees by being smarter? Wouldn't the student
have been more motivated to learning the subject if the teacher had instead,
replied by giving 2 solid examples of where the skill would be used in the
student's future?

I think I know why...because the teacher couldn't come up with an example of
where calculus would be used, at least not one that he student would think
"Yeah, I can see that...cool!".

It was the lazy way out.

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream
of things that never were, and ask why not?"
-----Robert Francis Kennedy, 1968 presidential campaign

> Mark wrote:
> 
> >"Education is what you're left with when you've
> >forgotten everything you learned."
> 
> >I don't remember who said that. ;)

 
> 
> Good one! I heard another gem last week, when an exasperated 
> student in my
> Calculus class asked the inevitable, "When am I EVER going to 
> use this in the real world?!?"
> 
> My Calculus teacher just smiled and admitted that it was a 
> hoop one had to
> jump through to get the degree. She closed with this great 
> line: "College
> is not a test of knowledge; it's a test of endurance."
> 
> Amen.
> Keith Cronin
> differentiate THIS.

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