I went to a large state university (UC Berkeley) and my first couple of years were mostly large lectures, small sections with TAs. Some were stultifying; some were inspiring. (I stood up and cheered in gratitude for the guy who taught my Plato course, a huge lecture). As luck would have it, I was an English major, so the 101 course in English was small sections (20 persons max) taught by full faculty. This was the kind of course where I was taught to think, as real faculty went over my essays and challenged and praised--#2, critiqued in meaningful ways. The last two years were a mixture of small classes and large lectures, but I was heavily influenced (luckily) by some very smart roommates, friends, and, yes, boyfriends.
Graduate school was nearly all small courses, yet one of the most wonderful was a lecture course. I met that professor (who didn't know me from Adam) twenty years later at a dinner party, and recited to her some of the outrageously wonderful things she'd lectured on. She was thrilled--and so was I to be able to tell her these things. In short, teaching is an art (which in the U.S. we pay at the level of an art), and why are we surprised that we all learn differently, respond to different modes of teaching, on different topics? On Mar 7, 2013, at 7:19 PM, glen <[email protected]> wrote: > > I only had 2 years of very large lectures freshman and sophomore years > of college. My k12 and the rest of college consisted mostly of your > (2), varying degrees of personal relationships with teachers. > > My (3) was limited because I'm a kook and don't play well with others. > But the few peers I did interact with became lifelong teachers to me. > I'm still friends with most of them. > > Frankly, I get very little out of lectures. If it's not interactive and > exploratory, it's largely wasted on me. The only reason I survived my > 1st two college years was because my high school classes covered much of > that material and I was too chicken to try to test out of those classes. > There was a horrifying bridge period the second half of my second year > in college and much of my third year that tested my resolve. I did very > poorly. Then it picked up quite a bit when I started taking classes > where thought was valued over testing skills. > > Nicholas Thompson wrote at 03/07/2013 04:03 PM: >> I am curious to know what the folks on this list think an education >> consists in. For me, it consisted in >> >> (1) Many large lectures of which most were stultifying beyond >> belief, but of which a few were inspiring. >> >> (2) A few settings where I made direct contact with professors (or >> good TA;s) and was taught how to do stuff and my work was critiqued in >> meaningful ways. >> >> (3) Many, many interactions with very smart peers in which they >> taught me and I got to try my ideas out on them. >> >> >> >> Was your experience different from that? > > > -- > =><= glen e. p. ropella > I came up from the ground, i came down from the sky, > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
