Evil, Evil Everywhere (was Re: [oclug] Test Shows 99.99% of

[Francis Pinteric]

--- pmaheral at igs.net wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Francis Pinteric wrote:
> [snip]
> > A professor/mentor of mine once told me that a bachelor's degree
> > teaches you how to think, a master's degree teaches you how to
> do,
> > and a doctorate gives you the ability to teach. Our specialist
> world
> [snip again]
> 
> Hmmm.... I had several professors (PhD's) that didn't have the
> ability
> to teach.

Yes, so did I. But I am talking ideals here, and so did that prof I
quoted. Reality, as usual, is quite another animal. Obviously, the
education system in this country is broken, and a large measure of
the blame can be put squarely on the shoulders of the teachers. Yes,
they are teaching a curriculum, but that too is broken. When I went
to school, most of the teachers I had were very bad. Students came to
me to help them with their math and science. I was very glad to have
been in university when I was 17. 

I remember immediately after my first talk as the Linux Doctor back
in 1998 (or was it 1997?), there were a whole spate of congratulatory
emails. One said that he learned more in that 20 minute talk (which
was filled with history, humour and a whole lot of Unix philosophy)
than he could in a whole semester of classes. Another said that he
would have liked to have me as his prof because I made the topic
matter interesting and certainly not boring. He said that there was
no way that he would be able to sleep through any of my lectures. I
responded that I probably would never be able to get tenure because
one of the prerequistites is to maximize the number of students who
sleep through lectures.

Yes, there are bad teachers. It's up to us to help change that. I
have an added responsibility because I am a Ph.D. which I take very
seriously. I have a very strong dislike of a Ph.D. who cannot teach.
After all, the word "doctor" is latin for "teacher." That is a
doctor's first responsibility.

>>>--fja->





=====
"A lot of people are rushing in [to Open Source] ... These people say 'I'm an open source advocate' but they're actually not. They just want to get rich quick ... and that could pervert the revolution."
   -- Eric Allman

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