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...After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything but they didn't know what anything meant. When they heard 'light that is reflected from a medium with an index,' they didn't know that it meant a material such as water. They didn't know that the 'direction of the light' is the direction in which you see something when you are looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing has been translated into meaningful words. So, if I asked, 'What is Brewster's Angle?' I'm going into the computer with the right key words. But if I say, 'Look at the water,' nothing happens -- they don't have anything under, 'Look at the water'!...
...Feynman... "Joking"
Rote learning is not only ok but indispensable if you want to become a Temple Pujari knowing all the vedic hymns by heart.
But not if you are squeezed into Physics teaching willy-nilly.
I may say without any hesitation that everything we learned in our University at Vizagh comes under rote learning. The worst was to memorize the answer to the standard question:
"Find out the energy levels and wave functions of a Hydrogen atom"
I almost gave up Physics trying to mug up all those horrendous separation of variables, substitutions, polynomials of the dreaded kind like the Associated Lagurre' thing, but I had to mug up so I could answer that question in half an hour, leaving no step.
Then and there I decided that this was no way to teach or learn QM. I never solved the Schrodinger nor the Dirac hydrogen atom on the blackboard. It was really not necessary...I could as well have spent 4 hours drawing all the atomic orbitals on the board copying White's wonderful pictures.
I had the good fortune of teaching 100% Right Learning to a failed student. I didn't go to any blackboard at all but made her work:
...Then there was this campus child, Ms S, my son's batchmate, who I knew was a serious student from KG onwards. And, Dr TBG (sadly no more) used to 'inherit' the EM I, EM II etc as I outgrew them. TBG himself was a campus boy 25 years older to her; and he had sat through my EM Courses when he was an IIT student. And, he religiously used to meet me before taking up my EM courses and 'Follow Me' (like in Mia Farrow's movie).
So, everything should gel, in the natural scheme of things.
But, she attended all his classes but failed, by practically submitting blank papers in both the mid- and the end-sem exams (I was by then the Chairman of the UG Committee, and had to 'oversee' her scripts).
She got the dreaded 'F' Grade in her 3rd year.
I asked her: 'Why'?
She simply shrugged her shoulders, bent her head down and made a gesture that said:
"Everything was going over her head".
Now, it turned out that the Old Curriculum was getting replaced by the New Curriculum; and this particular course was no longer being taught in the next semester. Which meant she would be losing a precious year if she doesn't get to 'repeat' that course in the very next semester.
That meant that some teacher should take that EM II Course only for her!
Dr TBG said: 'No'
And since I was the 'Inheritee' of TBG's EM Courses, the task naturally fell on me.
By now, you know me. Am I the one to take 3-hour lectures for a whole semester for just one student? And, that too a failed candidate?
So, I got into applying my 'Least Action Principle'. In our first meeting, I asked Ms S which book TBG used to follow. She said, "Griffiths" and that she did have a copy of her own. So did I.
I told her we would meet only on Wednesday afternoons. And I won't be lecturing, since she had already attended all of TBG's Lectures. She will bring her copy of Griffiths. I would start from Chapter I and select a dozen or so problems of increasing difficulty and mark them in her book. She will have one week to solve them in a file with PT sheets. She would make 2 copies. Submit one to me and keep the other with her. Next Wednesday, problems from the next Chapter will be ticked by me. Meanwhile, I would go through her last week's work. Correct the mistakes. Honor system will be followed by both of us. And, if she couldn't solve any of the problems, I would give hints, so she will try and submit them next week.
She was enthu itself. Both of us knew how boring it would be for us to stare at each other 3 hours every week.
I thought and dearly hoped she would start making excuses, absconding due to Spring-Fest and stomach ache and high fever after the first few weeks; and would meet me only occasionally.
Great going for both. And I would give her a 'P' grade and let her go.
No chance!
She was more regular than I. Waiting in front of my Office every Wednesday afternoon. With an ever-bulging file. And solve 90% of Griffith's problems except the wicked 'starred' ones. She would try many her own long-winded way. And, when I pointed out short-cuts, there would be a glow in her face. And, some of the integrals she would do simpler than my old-fashioned methods. And I had to do the 'starred' ones all over again after a lapse of many years.
Great learning experience for both of us.
And, she walked away with an 'A'.
Eyebrows were raised how an 'F' could get an 'A' all of a sudden; but by then gps was a feared fiend, and, in any case, I had her whole 'duplicate' file with me (I knew how to beat our system by then).
And Ms S would be a post-doc in some good US University by now!...
Ms S was in Hyderabad the other day and my son fetched her for a Sunday lunch. We gathered that she did her Ph D at the RPI, Troy, and, by and by, her Ph D thesis was selected by Springer for publication in their series:
"Recognizing outstanding Ph D Research"
And she told me that she worked very hard for my course and whatever she achieved in her life she owes it to her failing in her EM Course!!!
Who said,
'Every cloud has silver lining'...
...Posted by Ishani
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...After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything but they didn't know what anything meant. When they heard 'light that is reflected from a medium with an index,' they didn't know that it meant a material such as water. They didn't know that the 'direction of the light' is the direction in which you see something when you are looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing has been translated into meaningful words. So, if I asked, 'What is Brewster's Angle?' I'm going into the computer with the right key words. But if I say, 'Look at the water,' nothing happens -- they don't have anything under, 'Look at the water'!...
...Feynman... "Joking"
Rote learning is not only ok but indispensable if you want to become a Temple Pujari knowing all the vedic hymns by heart.
But not if you are squeezed into Physics teaching willy-nilly.
I may say without any hesitation that everything we learned in our University at Vizagh comes under rote learning. The worst was to memorize the answer to the standard question:
"Find out the energy levels and wave functions of a Hydrogen atom"
I almost gave up Physics trying to mug up all those horrendous separation of variables, substitutions, polynomials of the dreaded kind like the Associated Lagurre' thing, but I had to mug up so I could answer that question in half an hour, leaving no step.
Then and there I decided that this was no way to teach or learn QM. I never solved the Schrodinger nor the Dirac hydrogen atom on the blackboard. It was really not necessary...I could as well have spent 4 hours drawing all the atomic orbitals on the board copying White's wonderful pictures.
I had the good fortune of teaching 100% Right Learning to a failed student. I didn't go to any blackboard at all but made her work:
...Then there was this campus child, Ms S, my son's batchmate, who I knew was a serious student from KG onwards. And, Dr TBG (sadly no more) used to 'inherit' the EM I, EM II etc as I outgrew them. TBG himself was a campus boy 25 years older to her; and he had sat through my EM Courses when he was an IIT student. And, he religiously used to meet me before taking up my EM courses and 'Follow Me' (like in Mia Farrow's movie).
So, everything should gel, in the natural scheme of things.
But, she attended all his classes but failed, by practically submitting blank papers in both the mid- and the end-sem exams (I was by then the Chairman of the UG Committee, and had to 'oversee' her scripts).
She got the dreaded 'F' Grade in her 3rd year.
I asked her: 'Why'?
She simply shrugged her shoulders, bent her head down and made a gesture that said:
"Everything was going over her head".
Now, it turned out that the Old Curriculum was getting replaced by the New Curriculum; and this particular course was no longer being taught in the next semester. Which meant she would be losing a precious year if she doesn't get to 'repeat' that course in the very next semester.
That meant that some teacher should take that EM II Course only for her!
Dr TBG said: 'No'
And since I was the 'Inheritee' of TBG's EM Courses, the task naturally fell on me.
By now, you know me. Am I the one to take 3-hour lectures for a whole semester for just one student? And, that too a failed candidate?
So, I got into applying my 'Least Action Principle'. In our first meeting, I asked Ms S which book TBG used to follow. She said, "Griffiths" and that she did have a copy of her own. So did I.
I told her we would meet only on Wednesday afternoons. And I won't be lecturing, since she had already attended all of TBG's Lectures. She will bring her copy of Griffiths. I would start from Chapter I and select a dozen or so problems of increasing difficulty and mark them in her book. She will have one week to solve them in a file with PT sheets. She would make 2 copies. Submit one to me and keep the other with her. Next Wednesday, problems from the next Chapter will be ticked by me. Meanwhile, I would go through her last week's work. Correct the mistakes. Honor system will be followed by both of us. And, if she couldn't solve any of the problems, I would give hints, so she will try and submit them next week.
She was enthu itself. Both of us knew how boring it would be for us to stare at each other 3 hours every week.
I thought and dearly hoped she would start making excuses, absconding due to Spring-Fest and stomach ache and high fever after the first few weeks; and would meet me only occasionally.
Great going for both. And I would give her a 'P' grade and let her go.
No chance!
She was more regular than I. Waiting in front of my Office every Wednesday afternoon. With an ever-bulging file. And solve 90% of Griffith's problems except the wicked 'starred' ones. She would try many her own long-winded way. And, when I pointed out short-cuts, there would be a glow in her face. And, some of the integrals she would do simpler than my old-fashioned methods. And I had to do the 'starred' ones all over again after a lapse of many years.
Great learning experience for both of us.
And, she walked away with an 'A'.
Eyebrows were raised how an 'F' could get an 'A' all of a sudden; but by then gps was a feared fiend, and, in any case, I had her whole 'duplicate' file with me (I knew how to beat our system by then).
And Ms S would be a post-doc in some good US University by now!...
Ms S was in Hyderabad the other day and my son fetched her for a Sunday lunch. We gathered that she did her Ph D at the RPI, Troy, and, by and by, her Ph D thesis was selected by Springer for publication in their series:
"Recognizing outstanding Ph D Research"
And she told me that she worked very hard for my course and whatever she achieved in her life she owes it to her failing in her EM Course!!!
Who said,
'Every cloud has silver lining'...
...Posted by Ishani
**********************************************************************************************************************
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