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En Garde, whole no. 17, April 1946
Page 33
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page 33. Many instructors had their own individual ways of avoidance. I recall the head of the psychology department, whose elementary course I entered with such anticipation and interest. He spent most of his time talking about Blank's football and basketball teams, past and present; while I learned a whole lot about them, what little psych I learned I dug for myself. He was much too busy telling us of the days when Blank's brawny stalwarts were were not in the cellar of the Conference to the bothered with psychology. A physics instructor, under whom I sat passively and disgustedly for an entire year, was willing enough to talk about physics, but had a passion for making the students figure things out for themselves. This of course is fine, except that he not only would refuse the explanations that were needed, but would befog the issue with extraneous pieces of campus gossip. A subject like physics is tough titty at the best, but when you get a bunch of crap instead of the hints and help you need to reason it out, the value of the course quickly approaches zero. The professional education courses (covering such things as the technique of teaching) were sheerly tripe. Based on a profound fallacy (that is more important to know how to teach than it is to know the subject you are teaching) these courses served only to give employment to certain faculty members. The only one of them which was of the remotest value was the actual practice teaching, which did give the student considerable experience standing on his own two feet and trying to conduct a class. The others were of so little moment that I actually cannot remember enough about them to construct a criticism on them! About all I can remember is the unpleasant voice of one of the instructors, who sounded like a sonambulist with a mouthful of mouldy bran, and the utterly shameless way in which most education students cheated in examinations, even under the eye of their professors. When one became familiar with the complete absence of standards of any sort in the school of education, he no longer had difficulty in understanding why his high school teachers were such sorry specimens. One of the chief drawbacks of the Blank and, I presume, other curricula is their rigidity and unyieldingness. The student has to have so many units of this, but so many units of that. The result is that he spends the bulk of his time taking required subjects, and has very little opportunity to use the facilities of the University to give himself a broad cultural foundation. This is particularly true of the science and engineering divisions of the school. There seem to be few if any available orientation courses, or discussion seminars for non-specialized students. The result is that quite often when the student has managed to twist his schedule around so as to fit in an elective subject for his own enjoyment, he finds that the course has certain prerequisites which limit it to specialized students in that particular field. If he is able to pull wires to get into the course anyway, he often finds that it is not slanted for the layman in that subject, and that his lack of prerequisites prevents his getting anything out of the course whatever. A case in point is a course in photographic technique which was
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page 33. Many instructors had their own individual ways of avoidance. I recall the head of the psychology department, whose elementary course I entered with such anticipation and interest. He spent most of his time talking about Blank's football and basketball teams, past and present; while I learned a whole lot about them, what little psych I learned I dug for myself. He was much too busy telling us of the days when Blank's brawny stalwarts were were not in the cellar of the Conference to the bothered with psychology. A physics instructor, under whom I sat passively and disgustedly for an entire year, was willing enough to talk about physics, but had a passion for making the students figure things out for themselves. This of course is fine, except that he not only would refuse the explanations that were needed, but would befog the issue with extraneous pieces of campus gossip. A subject like physics is tough titty at the best, but when you get a bunch of crap instead of the hints and help you need to reason it out, the value of the course quickly approaches zero. The professional education courses (covering such things as the technique of teaching) were sheerly tripe. Based on a profound fallacy (that is more important to know how to teach than it is to know the subject you are teaching) these courses served only to give employment to certain faculty members. The only one of them which was of the remotest value was the actual practice teaching, which did give the student considerable experience standing on his own two feet and trying to conduct a class. The others were of so little moment that I actually cannot remember enough about them to construct a criticism on them! About all I can remember is the unpleasant voice of one of the instructors, who sounded like a sonambulist with a mouthful of mouldy bran, and the utterly shameless way in which most education students cheated in examinations, even under the eye of their professors. When one became familiar with the complete absence of standards of any sort in the school of education, he no longer had difficulty in understanding why his high school teachers were such sorry specimens. One of the chief drawbacks of the Blank and, I presume, other curricula is their rigidity and unyieldingness. The student has to have so many units of this, but so many units of that. The result is that he spends the bulk of his time taking required subjects, and has very little opportunity to use the facilities of the University to give himself a broad cultural foundation. This is particularly true of the science and engineering divisions of the school. There seem to be few if any available orientation courses, or discussion seminars for non-specialized students. The result is that quite often when the student has managed to twist his schedule around so as to fit in an elective subject for his own enjoyment, he finds that the course has certain prerequisites which limit it to specialized students in that particular field. If he is able to pull wires to get into the course anyway, he often finds that it is not slanted for the layman in that subject, and that his lack of prerequisites prevents his getting anything out of the course whatever. A case in point is a course in photographic technique which was
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