Comments on: Dumbing Down

By: benny

benny — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:35:09 +0000

my math prof (i am an economis major) always mixed hard and easy stuff. he was quite fun to listen too and you could understand alot even if it was not so easy stuff. but sometimes he should said “well some of you want to maybe do their PHD after they graduated, for them is the next passage of 15 minutes” in which he prooved whatever theorem was on at the moment.

he also made good weekly exercise papers in which he had a 50/50 mix between proov-intense and calc-intense assignments…

mixing is just the way to go i would say

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 02:43:19 +0000

My opinion on this particular subject is, if we want to contribute in the advancement of scientific researches, we have to make a selection of the futur scientists, and by that, we want the brightest to succeed and the others, well maybe they should find another field of interest. This might sound a bit harsh but we don’t want pretty good brain surgeons right, we want the best brain surgeons. Same for mathematiciens, now i’m only a second year student majoring in math, and i would feel insulted if my profesors would dumb down their teachings, i want to learn the roots of every theorems that are presented to me, not only remeber certain steps to get an answer which i’m not realy quite sure what i’m calculating, what’s the point of that right? (sorry for my english, i’m french)

By: tpc

tpc — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 01:12:42 +0000

I guess the same thing happens everywhere. It doesn’t help that more students are getting tertiary education – quality and quantity being inversely proportional – and they are more vocal. The silly administrators are also not helping by being overly focused on student reviews.

I’m teaching the same course next year, and would definitely try and engage the 10%.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 23:19:41 +0000

I’m in the same position the student you mentioned. Specifically, I’m taking advanced linear algebra, a class that at my school comprises mostly computer science, physics, and I’m-not-going-to-grad-school-so-I-don’t-care math majors. As a result, the professor spends entirely too much time on the easy stuff, while skipping the interesting stuff that I think is the whole point of taking the class (e.g. we’re doing an ‘engineering’ approach to determinants, and skipped dual spaces and functionals).

As one of those students who wouldn’t appreciate you dumbing down a class, I’d say don’t do it! Even if 90% of the class isn’t going to graduate as a math major, they need to deal with the fact that they’re taking a math class at a specified level. On the other hand, my advisor was almost denied tenure on the basis of student reviews: they were atrocious, because he tried to cover the material rigorously.

Maybe a good middle ground is to cover the material in a way that the 90% would find comfortable, and interject comments and extra-credit assignments in parallel that the interested 10% can pursue to learn at least some of the material not covered in class.