You know, teaching algebra to college students, I spend half my time trying to convince people they aren't dumb. It'd be a whole lot easier to get to the math if no one had taught them they were dumb in the first place.
Let them think they're dumb. If they're anything like any of the college students I associate with, then feeling stupid is the single greatest motivation to make an effort in a class. If I had not felt like i was the stupidest person in the class for the entire year, I never would have passed organic chemistry.
In general "good students" respond well to not succeeding immediately at something, like organic chemistry, because they know they're really not dumb and can get it if they try a little harder. You run into these types at TAMS, Carnegie Mellon, and they're about half the population at most major 4 year schools. They've learned how to push back
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I got halfway through the prologue, then realized that the example used was stupid. Any child who takes school that seriously was fucked up to begin with (and is completely ficitonal, as the example was 99% imaginary and based on incomplete anecdotal evidence in the first place). Add this to the writer's rampant hyperbole and rather unclear and poorly assembled syntax, and I couldn't bring myself to read the rest of the poor fellow's selectively informed train-wreck of a book. Consider this an act of kindness. If I read the whole thing, I get the feeling that I'd have to spend a lot of time ripping the ideas in the book into tatters, which, let's face it, is a waste of both my time and yours
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