Re: authenticity

Darlene Sybert (c557506@SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU)
Tue, 20 Aug 1996 02:32:20 -0500


On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Dave Lewis wrote:
> I don't see why grades in any class are not destructive, why they don't
> promote false notions of what *learning* is and why they don't help to
> force students into ways of "learning" that are unlike any they will
> encounter IRL!
>
What specific ways are you talking about that will not be ways of
learning they will encounter in real life?

For my classes, students read, think, discuss, "trouble-shoot," make
plans with co-workers, implement the plans and write a "report" about all
of that designed to educate or persuade a target audience.
Which of those "ways of learning" is it that you think is not pursued in
professional life...or any life for that matter?

And I also have to object to your use of the word "force." There is no
"force" used at UMC to my knowledge. Students are here voluntarily...
the only "force" is their desire to learn, get a degree and/or keep
their parents happy. I have nothing to do with instilling or "enforcing"
any of those motivations...they are all student-generated. So in what sense
am I as an instructor "forcing" them to learn in certain ways?

Darlene Sybert
http://www.missouri.edu/~c557506/index.htl
University of Missouri at Columbia (English)
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...I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise__
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. -Jn Keats
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