It’s the “I only need this for an exam” mentality and, to be fair, it has been fostered by a generation’s worth of focus on exams as the be-all and end-all of education.
So they learn it for one goal and it doesn’t even enter their heads that actually they should be learning it because it is useful information.
You see this in all aspects of education. Even professional education, in which you would really think the the students would understand that the purpose of the exam is to aid them professionally rather than vice versa.
It’s only going to get worse as the rewards for getting the slip of paper increase whilst the consequences of not truly understanding the material from which that slip of paper was derived diminish (via, for example, remedial courses).
(Saying that, I think I barely used a trig identity in three year’s worth of Cambridge mathematics and certainly haven’t used them since so I have to admit that I don’t readily think “sec-squared” when I hear “tan-squared plus 1”. I think that this is not particularly relevant to your rant, however, because it is 8 years since I took A-level mathematics and it most certainly would have been on the tip of my tongue at age 19)
confused You got through Cambridge mathematics without knowing trig identities? How? Or was it proper mathematics, as opposed to NatSci maths?
/hijack
Yeah, it is the “I only need it for the exam mentality”. I’ve been through it myself, but on occasion forced myself to understand things, which has proved useful. Currently, in my office, anyone struggling with a mathematical problem generally ends up at my desk, and I understand what AIPS (a horrid piece of software designed to calibrate and deconvolve radio data) actually does when it goes on about Fast Fourier Transforming and things like that. I am so glad I didn’t let myself slip into that mentality, but I can see why people do.
Proper mathematics. There ain’t much trig in abstract mathematics, nor in statistics, both of which subjects I tended to focus on. And I’m sure I must have needed them in the methods-y courses for Fourier transforms, differential equations and the like, but (a) damned if I can remember and (b) there wasn’t as much of that stuff as you might think anyway.
I kid you not. I was asked this this morning. Quite frankly, what I wanted to say was “Dear, if you don’t know how to do this, then this is not the course for you, you should think about doing something a bit simpler.”
And the usual stuff about unit vectors. :rolleyes: Ack, You are doing a physics degree. This means you have at least a B in maths AND physics. Have you forgotten everything?
That’s one question I couldn’t answer now. I thinK I remember doing some vector math in one of my calculus classes, but it’s just been too long for me to remember it. Like I said, for math, and computer science. Use it or lose it.
I’m sorry if I’m stating the obvious angua , but you are part of the culling out process. It’s best for all concerned for your department to identify the students who shouldn’t be there and to discourage them from proceeding in the degree program as soon as possible.
My father, who is an educator, pointed out to me that pre-med is sometimes harder than the actual medical degree program just for this reason.
You’re doing everyone a valuable service, encouraging those with the proper aptitude, while re-directing those who lack it.
Alas, no. Fortunately the line came from a draft submitted for my preliminary comments rather than the final version of the essay. I think I will draw up a Short Guide to Writing Papers before the final copies are due.
It’s moments like this that make me think fondly of my own freshman English professor, a grey-bearded, many-times-divorced Brooklynite whose instructions to students began, “You would have to be a fool to think you had to tell me Shakespeare’s first name was William.” Someday I hope to achieve the same level of curmudgeonliness
I remember a friend of mine was putting together a list of stupid statements he found in the papers of his chemistry students. (He was inspired by those books on history that were compiled from high school student papers, that would talk about how “the horrors of the Black Plaque gave rise to roving bands of religious Flatulents” and so forth.) Mind you, these were premeds at an Ivy League school, too.
I remember one good one on chirality. It went a bit like this: “If you have a rock, and then you have another rock just like it, that’s chirality.” Then there was the odd explanation about a cobalt atom turning pink after being subjected to good bondage. But my personal favorite?
Q: What is the rate-limiting step in this reaction?
