[915] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: My meeting with Marilee Jones
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Fri Oct 5 05:20:23 2001
Message-ID: <200110050800.EAA14166@hikari-no-ken.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 04:00:53 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: The events that comprise the history of the universe.
Well, here's a question or two.
1.) Is the freshman year really being "dumbed down" or is the same
material just being taught more effectively, thus stressing students
out less? This is certainly an ongoing and actively pursued goal of
the faculty. I would hypothesize that if this were the case, that it
would be noticed disproportionately in entry-level classes, because
these are considered most important to attract new students into
departments, and because they are generally better populated. Witness
the front-loading of stellar teaching talent onto froshly courses.
2.) Do some or many MIT classes set impossibly high goals? Perhaps
professors are deciding that learning a smaller amount of material,
better, is more useful, educationally, in the long run?
3.) I know that many of the core classes have been rearranged or split
to improve grouping. Maybe more freshpersons are simply in a class
which is being taught in a way or at a level which better suits them?
4.) Are MIT students getting stupider due to pervasive moral decay in
our post-post-modern world? Or due to the encroachment of
dispassionate, credential-seeking over-acheivers into our fine
institution? Watch out, the upper level classes might be next if the
faculty continue to adjust to this trend.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the value of an MIT education,
and what it is that it's supposed to teach us. Certainly it's not a
mere collection of facts, but it is partly that. Everyone looks down
on rote memorization, but being exposed to a wide variety (and deep
variety, in a chosen field) of facts is important when solving
real-world problems. Of course, which facts different people consider
to be important are different, and even change over time with the
individual. Yay, liberal shotgun approach!
Ceratinly a great deal of it is technique - how to think about certain
types of problems, the mechanical tricks to work through them, and
indeed, how to approach problems in general. Yay, box of tools
approach!
Sort of wedged in-between is technical vocabulary. Which is more
important than I thought. Yay, professional indoctrinization!
Add to that other social skills, like the ability to work in teams.
Or personal skills, like time management, prioritization, leadership,
learning initiative, and membership in a society of scholars and
citizens.
I guess the reason I'm writing this is that I find concern about
"dumbing down" to, out of necessity, embody a somewhat narrow notion
of learning and/or intelligence. I think a good engineer or scientist
needs to be educated in a manner which hits on all of these different
sorts of skills. If the faculty are successful in doing this, does
that correlated to greater pain and pace and pressure as more is
require of us, or less, as our tasks are varied, the reliance on
purely mechanical tricks and skills is lessened, and we begin to find
self-motivation and inspiration as we see the larger truths of our
chosen fields of study? Maybe what I'm trying to say is, am I even
answering (with my own questions) the right question?
Beland
Who Believes That the Most Interesting Problems Are Interdisciplinary,
Anyway
