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Jeremy is a phd student at UIC right now and I'm pretty sure he taught a few classes there. As someone who moved to the states at 13 I have to agree with him.
by m_ke 13y ago
Jeremy is a phd student at UIC right now and I'm pretty sure he taught a few classes there.
As someone who moved to the states at 13 I have to agree with him. Most teachers in America are forced to prep their students for exams instead of teaching them how to think critically. Instead of building an intuition, students are forced to memorize rules and equations so that they can finish their standardized exams in time. The problems done in class and for hw are of the same format as the exams, with the numbers used being the only difference. I've seen plenty of college students get offended when a professor puts a problem on an exam that requires some critical thinking.
I did my math degree at a school that had a special program for future math teachers and they were consistently the worst performing students in my classes. Abstract Algebra was a disaster for them, most couldn't put together even the simplest proofs. With exams approaching, they all begged the professor to tell them which proofs they were required to memorize. Somehow I got by with perfect scores by understanding the content while they had a tough time pulling off anything above 20%.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoThe problem isn't prepping for exams, the problem is that the exams cover only mechanical transformation. Put real problem solving on the exam and this goes away. Of course, then teachers who can't problem solve (most of them) will be up in arms...
- m_ke 13y agoThat's exactly what I was getting at.