We had this happen too- both the plagiarizing sources, and the plagiarizing each other- there would be say 5 Chinese students in a class, and every one of them would turn in a paper that was basically the same as the other 4. Instead of working independently on their assignments, they’d work on them as a group and each turn in the group results as their own.
There was a LOT of friction between the American/European students and the Chinese students about this- a lot of it stemmed from the administration and professors being willing to give them a pass for what amounted to plagiarism and cheating according to the university rules, and giving them a warning, instead of giving them all a bad grade on the assignment and a stern warning.
Bump and Jragon’s examples kind of skew the “building on their work” Chinese approach. That mentality stems from quoting ancient philosophies and sayings where a misquote is a major faux pas. Plagarism when it comes to modern academia doesn’t apply. I think what Bump is referencing is simply foreign students trying to push the envelope on how much slack they’re given for being foreign. They definitely know better.
I agree, nursing too. I worked in a hospital and an assisted living facility and was amazed at how little thinking the nurses actually did. They don’t need to because they just follow doctor’s orders, however, a good nurse who thinks, can spot potential serious problems in time to notify a doctor and help someone avert disaster.
And that leads to the observation that there are really two questions to ask.
One is whether or not there are subjects that you can major in or get a degree in where there really is an expectation and understanding that little original or independent thought is required and that the degree consists mostly of memorization and parroting out the expected answers or plugging numbers into the right formulas.
The other is whether or not there are subjects where even though the real expectation is that the student demonstrates independent thought, it is rather easy in a practical sense to BS your way to a passing grade through memorization because the grading/assessment practices commonly do not sufficiently test for independent thought.
There were several undergrad classes where I think I could have gotten a C just by memorizing the formulas and facts. Maybe I would get a low score on the projects but multiple choice and short answer questions were such a big percentage of your grade it didn’t really matter that you got a 62 on the term paper if all you wanted to do was pass. Grad classes, no way. If you didn’t know the facts, you wouldn’t do well, but then the facts were only a foundation - you had to do real research and/or real experimentation and report on what you found.
Law students do very little rote memorization. The point is to learn how to think like a lawyer, not to memorize the law, which after all is already written down.
In Med school, anatomy in general, and neuroanatomy in particular were nothing but memorization (okay, and I suppose recognition and then regurgitation of what you’ve memorized when given various clues). But, NO creative thought or deductive reasoning.
Rote memorization might get someone through a beginning or intermediate level foreign language course, but actually completing a degree as a foreign language major would require upper level coursework covering foreign literature and culture. Rote memorization isn’t going to be very helpful there.
I wasn’t trying to imply that they didn’t put effort in and cheated out of sloth; far from it. What they did was 2 things- one, they did collective work on non-collective projects, and two, rather than cite a source, they tended to pirate entire paragraphs for their research papers unquoted, with one cite at the bottom or something like that. It was like they sort of got the idea of citations, but didn’t get the idea of quotes, except I think from their mindset, that was a perfectly valid way to get a point across- put some respected authority’s words in your paper.
Most of calculus and related areas is largely rote memorization, but the math that university professors work on is a completely different field. Seriously, high-school and freshman- or sophomore-undergraduate math might as well be a completely separate subject; it’s just taught in the math department because…well, who else is going to do it. (And there’s a bit of real analysis and ring theory involved sometimes, but whatever.) I’d rather see calculus (as opposed to real analysis) classes taught in the applied math, engineering, etc. departments, but that’s a discussion for another time.
Anyway, in math, there are certainly big results, but hardly any ‘formulas’ at all; the subject is about proving interesting results, rather than just compiling a toolbox of formulas to stick numbers into. For example, here is a random math paper off the arxiv. (It really is random; I was just looking for one that was reasonably short and in a subject I know a little but not a lot about.) It’s more computational than most, but it’s certainly not a matter of applying formulas.
You might be able to find something that’s largely memorization-based in certain areas of engineering, but I doubt you’ll find anything at all that fits in among academic disciplines.
It’s not even really true that most of calculus is largely rote memorization… that’s just the way it’s often presented to the great hordes of uncaring students required to “learn” it regardless of personal interest.
As far as I’m concerned, while it’s correct to say math isn’t about calculations and formulas, it’s also not really about proofs and theorems, either (though all of these are an element of it). It’s about exploring and understanding abstract ideas, and, even informally, calculus has plenty of that (so long as “calculus” is understood to be something other than the pointlessly drilled skill of “Learn to simulate a symbolic integrator” which classes typically reduce it to).
Actually, I think physics is similar. In introductory physics, you learn about inelastic collisions, conservation of momentum, and so forth. The goal is to compute what happens after a collision, find the trajectory of an object, etc. But that’s actually the uninteresting, utilitarian epilogue of physics rather than the nontrivial, interesting bits. Academic physics is about figuring out how particles could possibly interact to form the phenomena we see: What kind of particle could be responsible for certain decay processes, what properties would it have, how could we use those theoretical properties to set up an experiment to detect it, and what new physics would such a particle generate? The process of applying F = ma to a cannonball to find its trajectory, or using a trig substitution to compute an integral, or solving a system of linear equations— that’s just the aftermath of math and physics. The real, compelling, challenging stuff is the bit that’s being done. It’s great that those cool new things eventually filter down into formulas for more mundane applications, but memorizing those formulas is another business entirely. (And, of course, the people who memorize the formulas don’t do so to be academic mathematicians or physicists; they do so because they want to use them as a tool for their real goal of designing and constructing cool new buildings, or space vehicles, or useful robots, or whatever.)
Fair enough: there’s real analysis involved; there are tricks like Feynman’s favorite one of parametrizing an integrand cleverly; etc. (When I was an grad student TAing a calculus-style class, the professor tried to retool the mandatory introductory calculus class as a more theoretical analysis class. It didn’t end well.) Most calculus classes, unfortunately, turn into an entire semester of memorizing various substitutions and endless drilling and repetition. It sucks, particularly since the whole class could be compressed into a couple of weeks rather than a full term. I think the problem is that, as you said, there are great hordes of uncaring students who have zero interest in it but are told they need it for the subjects they do care about. I’m not sure how dumbing it down to a tedious slog that teaches students nothing more than doing a pale imitation of Mathematica satisfies anyone, but I could spend a whole thread ranting about the way introductory math classes are taught.
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As far as I’m concerned, while it’s correct to say math isn’t about calculations and formulas, it’s also not really about proofs and theorems, either (though all of these are an element of it). It’s about exploring and understanding abstract ideas
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It is all about abstract ideas, but the proofs and theorems are a way of making sure that we’re actually exploring and understanding those ideas correctly. At that level of abstraction, there’s really no other way to talk about such things than with mathematical language.
Those aren’t etymologies you hear, though. Nobody ever posts on a blog, “Hey, did you know the origin of ‘laser’? It stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation!”. The ones you actually hear are, invariably, the bogus ones.
