3 ms·
All of this can be true or achieved without making a class so difficult as to fail 1/3 of the students.
by voisin 4y ago
All of this can be true or achieved without making a class so difficult as to fail 1/3 of the students.
- tsbischof 4y agoMaybe? Weeder courses in CS based on SICP have similar dropout rates, and the push towards making the curriculum easier causes endless hand-wringing. We could argue that organic chemistry is less central to medicine than recursion and functional programming are to software development, but there is a similar "click" that is a reasonable signal of whether you are likely to parse more complicated concepts.
- PubliusMI 4y agoHumans are not all equally capable.
- giardini 4y agoI don't believe organic chemistry is intentionally used to cull out medical students. Instead it is simply the difficulty of the course, which by-the-way matches the learning situation in medical school: My organic chemistry course was excellent until the half-semester, whereupon the professor's well-organized and insightful presentation ceased. Instead we were confronted with a plethora of memorization with little organization. The change in teaching method and learning was obvious to everyone in the room. We questioned it and the professor said apologetically "That's the way it is! It's hard! I'm sorry!" Within a week a large part of the class dropped and many of the remainder became more reclusive and protective about their study. So much must be memorized in medical school that the process alters the way students think. I watched an excellent scientist fall away from science (but become an excellent memorizer) in medical school. Once a brilliant researcher, now a doddering encyclopedia of (sometimes incorrect) facts. Sad.