2008 Woodie Awards
UA math classes present problems
A confederacy of dunces
Noel Runyan
Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: Opinion
I got lucky my freshman year.
I'm talking about my math class, of course. I didn't know it at the time, but I was extremely fortunate to have one of the few sections of Survey of Calculus that was taught in the traditional lecture format. I wouldn't go through the trouble of describing it here, but apparently this is becoming about as common as a truly original metaphor in a college newspaper's editorial writing. That is to say, not at all.
This is how it goes - somewhere in time, there exists a room. In this case, it is the gaping chasm of a lecture hall located in the bowels of Ozark hall, filled with hundreds of students; fertile minds yearning to know the mystical pleasures of synthetic division.
In this room, one would find a professor professing and students doing whatever it is students do in class. Paying attention, I suppose, perhaps even learning.
Students emerged from this cocoon at the semester's end with little to no real knowledge of math. Whatever they had crammed into their skulls doubtlessly seeped out within two days. But at least there was some integrity to the process.
That kind of integrity could be bought only from a face-to-face relationship with a teacher, something I think might be on the way out at the UA, at least for the vast majority of students who are not math majors and take only one class to satisfy their core requirements.
In those days - those blessed days - when I once tried to understand the rudiments of mathematics, my homework problems were taken from a three-dimensional textbook, and I did them by myself.
I had to use my own brain, or, as things took a turn for the worse, my own brain with the aid and encouragement of another. In fact, a $10-an-hour brain: that of a biochemistry major taking Calculus III as a freshman. But that was just for homework. I still had to go to class and do my own thinking on test day.
Ye Olde Lectyre Formatte might be antiquated, but at least it had the student's interest at heart. I don't know if that's how the world works anymore.
I'm talking about my math class, of course. I didn't know it at the time, but I was extremely fortunate to have one of the few sections of Survey of Calculus that was taught in the traditional lecture format. I wouldn't go through the trouble of describing it here, but apparently this is becoming about as common as a truly original metaphor in a college newspaper's editorial writing. That is to say, not at all.
This is how it goes - somewhere in time, there exists a room. In this case, it is the gaping chasm of a lecture hall located in the bowels of Ozark hall, filled with hundreds of students; fertile minds yearning to know the mystical pleasures of synthetic division.
In this room, one would find a professor professing and students doing whatever it is students do in class. Paying attention, I suppose, perhaps even learning.
Students emerged from this cocoon at the semester's end with little to no real knowledge of math. Whatever they had crammed into their skulls doubtlessly seeped out within two days. But at least there was some integrity to the process.
That kind of integrity could be bought only from a face-to-face relationship with a teacher, something I think might be on the way out at the UA, at least for the vast majority of students who are not math majors and take only one class to satisfy their core requirements.
In those days - those blessed days - when I once tried to understand the rudiments of mathematics, my homework problems were taken from a three-dimensional textbook, and I did them by myself.
I had to use my own brain, or, as things took a turn for the worse, my own brain with the aid and encouragement of another. In fact, a $10-an-hour brain: that of a biochemistry major taking Calculus III as a freshman. But that was just for homework. I still had to go to class and do my own thinking on test day.
Ye Olde Lectyre Formatte might be antiquated, but at least it had the student's interest at heart. I don't know if that's how the world works anymore.
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