From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f948976d12c7ee33 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-06-25 07:03:18 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-han1.dfn.de!news-ber1.dfn.de!news.uni-hamburg.de!cs.tu-berlin.de!uni-duisburg.de!not-for-mail From: Georg Bauhaus Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Understanding and Teaching: Who may teach Ada? Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:03:17 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GMUGHDU Message-ID: References: <3EF5B10E.40804@noplace.com> <3EF695F3.7020703@attbi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de X-Trace: a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de 1056549797 2751 134.91.1.15 (25 Jun 2003 14:03:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.uni-duisburg.de NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:03:17 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.5.8-20010221 ("Blue Water") (UNIX) (HP-UX/B.11.00 (9000/831)) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:39727 Date: 2003-06-25T14:03:17+00:00 List-Id: John R. Strohm wrote: :> :> In a better world, this phrase should be put in a frame, :> and teachers should not be employed if they fail. :> Maybe the test should be more flexible, offering a choice :> of audience, but only for the test. : : No. That is the whole point of the test. If you can explain it to someone : who has the prerequisite N many years of specialized knowledge and : experience, you may understand it thoroughly, or you may not. No. What I was thinking of is that if you can explain things, _during_ the test, to _some_ audience, you have demonstrated skills necessary for (a) making explanations (b) analysing making explanations Then, if your job is going to be teaching another audience than that of the test, you have proven that you can, if necessary, learn how to prepare lectures for different sorts of audiences. If teaching skills were an integral part of becoming a professor, things would be better though, at least over here. If you can : explain it to a layman, who DOESN'T have the specialized knowledge, who : needs YOU to walk him through possibly YEARS of work in the course of : minutes, you DO understand it thoroughly. There are things to learn before you can do this, and if you have the requirements for doing so, then a test might show this. For example, if you are going to teach Russian school children, the test might proove that you know Russian language, even if your audience has been a bunch of engineers. sounds trivial, but this is the idea: one can learn how to explain things, at least to some extent, to different audiences. Requires work, forbids arrogance, and might need teching teachers, and a cultural change ;-) : Read the section in Clifford Stoll's "Cuckoo's Egg", about his Ph.D. oral : examination, where the department chairman asked the final question: "Why is : the sky blue?", and then, to EVERYTHING Stoll said, responded "Can you be : more specific?" and made him go ALL THE WAY THROUGH several years of : multiple disciplines, to answer the question IN DETAIL and show that he knew : it, all the way down. A good example of teaching rhetorics. There is no good lecture absent skills in rhetorics. (I am not referring to the (self-)marketing meaning of rhetorics.) However, what counts, in my view, is the skills, (a) above, and the ability to understand what has been going on, (b) above. : Yeah, and it is a damned shame that the physics department chairman did not : understand that Feynman's job in that classroom at that time was to teach : the FRESHMEN, and HIS job was to keep the tourists OUT OF THE WAY so Feynman : COULD teach the freshmen. That is what made me ask whether he would have succeeded (in this sense). - Georg hoping to find time, some day, for the exercises volume of the Lectures on Physics. Hey, preparing good exercises is another test, I think, by which you demonstrate that you have really understood something.