In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
dennis roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>At 08:19 AM 03/21/2000 -0500, Herman Rubin wrote:
>>The purpose of any course should be the development of
>>knowledge and the ability to use it. Even the use of
>>assignments for any other purpose does not contribute to
>>education. Assignments for the purpose of having the
>>students do assignments, or even for the purpose of grading
>>beyond the minimum necessary, are very common and in my
>>opinion helping to lower the quality of education.
>>It a student already knows how to do it, that student
>>should not have to do it. It becomes busy work.
>this sounds great ... but, how does the instructor KNOW this if not through
>some form of work that you have students engage in and let the instructor
>look at?
>not admitting that the projects i give to students amount to busy work (i
>am sure many students would claim that) ... but, much of education and by
>that i mean LEARNING ... IS busy work ... busy to the extent that you
>practice something sufficiently so that it becomes 'natural' to you ... to
>think that way, to write that way, to solve problems that way ... etc.
This might possibly be the case for the weak students, but
not for the strong ones. It is the concepts which are the
most important part, and concepts need little, if any,
practice.
One should give a variety of exercises, and the student
should do as much as is necessary. We cannot remedy the
damage done by the elementary and high schools having
students only work for a grade; it will be necessary to
let those who want to learn to do so without wasting time
on trivial pursuit and manipulation. Some should do more,
some should do less, some should skip all the "easy" ones,
and some may never be able to do more than that.
Those wanting to learn will probably do more than
necessary. Should we penalize them by wasting their
time for the ones who will not work except when
they are being whipped?
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
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