From: baldwin@csservera.scs.usna.navy.mil (J.D. Baldwin)
Newsgroups: sci.math,misc.education
Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
Date: 10 Nov 92 17:39:27 GMT
Followup-To: misc.education
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dep't., U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
In-reply-to: baldwin@csservera.scs.usna.navy.mil's message of 08 Nov 92 17:27:29 -0400

chrisman@purina.berkeley.edu (chrisman) writes:
>>baldwin@csservera.scs.usna.navy.mil (J.D. Baldwin) writes:
>>some work, perhaps even some training is required for most of us to become
>>good teachers.  Personally, I wouldn't mind knowing a little more
>>developmental and cognitive psychology; I especially would like to learn
>>something about these subjects if I were to teach younger children.  I
>>have developed a set of rules of thumb which seem to get me through
>>undergraduate teaching assignments, but there is no science to my
>>approach.  While I reserve the right to disagree with someone else's
>>theories, I would at least like to know what the evidence is and what
>>other people's thinking has produced before I claim that I know anything
>>about how children and adults learn anything.

mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) wrote that, not me
(baldwin).  Strictly speaking, its not a mis-attribution, but it looks
like one at first glance.  Also, you seem to attribute these words
directly to me in a paragraph quoted below.  Please be more careful.

On a related technical note, I apologize for the wide cross-posting
which included sci.math to begin with.  I have redirected this back to
misc.education, where I feel it belongs.  Feel free to disagree and
edit the Followup-To: line appropriately.

>I also would like some "training".  As with most skills, one can improve
>one's skill at teaching by making use of other people's experience.
>If I had my choice, this "training" would consist of hearing about
>other teachers' rules of thumb and hearing about how they handled 
>particular students under particular situations - in short, gaining
>their personal experience.

That is what we do here, or try to (though it wasn't done when I
arrived).  I think it works pretty well.  Education "training" ought
to be the way medicine is supposed to be:  "Above all, do no harm."
In my opinion and (limited) experience, NO education "training" is far
superior to what most teacher certification courses require.

>Why aren't education courses like that?  In my experience, teachers of
>education courses try to make teaching into a _science_ (as baldwin 
>would have it), putting out lots of unsubstantiated generalizations as 
>"theorems" of developmental and cognitive psychology.  I can learn
>more about teaching from a one-hour conversation with a good teacher
>than I can learn in a ten-hour education course or seminar.

Exactly correct, and I regret that you seem to attribute the opposite
view to me, when I got into this discussion to decry education
"science" to begin with.
--
 From the catapult of:              |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_  J. D. Baldwin, Comp Sci Dept|+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  U.S. Naval Academy|+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /   baldwin@usna.navy.mil   |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
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Newsgroups: sci.math