duncan@geppetto.ctt.bellcore.com (Scott Duncan) (12/22/88)
In article <31@rpi.edu> mccombt@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Todd McComb) writes: >In article <9237@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes: > >>But look who teaches the intro courses at the majority of American >>universities: teaching assistants. What are their *teaching* >>qualifications? None. You do not need an education in education to be >>considered qualified to practice education at the college level (ironic, >>isn't it?). I cannot think of any other profession where this is true. Having been a teaching assistant (quite a while ago, admittedly), I vouch for the lack of ANY training to teach. I was observed for one class period once during my first semester. I also attended one teaching assistant staff meet- ing where we discussed grading compositions (I was in the Dept. of English). But I really did not receive any direction from anyone. (I am not suggesting that if I called for 'help' I would not have been, but it wasn't really clear you needed help until you were in very deep. This is the problem with being inexperienced.) >Better teaching is certainly something this country could use, but >good teaching is hard to find and it is not rewarded. My 'reward' was having one of the compositions I graded used as an example for the other assistants by the department head of the assistantship program. I would have liked more encouragment for my teaching efforts, however. The attention paid to improving my classroom skill would have been a big 'reward' in my mind. >>Why does this happen? Although it is more important for professors to >>be teaching the fundamentals, they are the only ones who know enough to >>teach the advanced courses. So what happens? Students don't get a >>good base on which to build, and they really have to struggle all of >>their college life. I probably agree with this. I always felt the graduate students didn't need as much attention -- we always thought we knew almost everything anyway :-). It was the freshmen and sophomores who needed the real help. But you don't get tenure by wanting to teach undergraduates how to write. So there is no real 'reward' in this sense either. You get a PhD to teach more potential PhD students. >Actually, I would like to see those fundamentals you talk about being >taught in high school. When I was in high school, I don't remember >being taught anything. Really. I learned some things on my own, but >I would say the whole set of formal education there was an utter waste. I would have loved to teach high school, but it was the first two years of inane 'education' courses in the College of Education which cured me of that. >I also have a problem with grades. I think that grades hurt the learning >process, and a place which puts too much emphasis on grades (like the >United States, and other countries I assume) creates a poor environment >for students. I would really like to see grades done away with. A student >knows what they know, and a grade will not reflect that in many cases. I'm rather ambivalent about the issue of grades. I believe that if you do the work, the grades will follow. But it's clearly harder for some to "do the work" than for others. Actually, one thing that would be interesting would be to try to require better students to "adopt" a poorer student and tutor them. (It's always said you learn more teaching than being the student.) In this way, the poorer students will get help and better students will appreciate the subject more. And the tutors would be evaluated on their effectiveness in assisting others -- this would make the competition for grades less important than helping others succeed. (I'm sure there are plenty of objections and adminsitrative problems with such an idea, but it seems worthwhile to me and worthwhile trying to overcome the problems to make it work.) Speaking only for myself, of course, I am... Scott P. Duncan (duncan@ctt.bellcore.com OR ...!bellcore!ctt!duncan) (Bellcore, 444 Hoes Lane RRC 1H-210, Piscataway, NJ 08854) (201-699-3910 (w) 201-463-3683 (h))