Re: [MATHEDCC] Who will teach in the 21st century??

Bret Taylor (bret@IAG.NET)
Sun, 5 Sep 1999 14:38:22 -0400 (EDT)

At 10:15 AM 9/5/99 -0400, Martha Haehl wrote:

snippets from Martha:

>However, threats such as distance education delivered by mega-corporations
>challenge us to re-evaluate what education is. If a student's experience on
>a college campus is to sit passively from classroom to classroom and have
>little or no interaction with other students or with the instructor (which
>is the experience of many quiet students even in small classes), and if
>education is primarily defined as the inparting of information, or
>demonstrating procedures that the students then learn to mimic, then mass
>produced distance education can deliver information effectively and with the
>aid of high tech can get the students to "perform" or "mimic" the
>procedures.
>
Scary trend to me is the following:

(Not wide spread yet, but just as the frog in the slowly rising pot of
water, I think it is creeping up on us.)

Technology such as "distance learning" while in itself is not bad has helped
those bureaucrats who see education as a three step process:

1. Student pays for class.

2. Student attends class (at least most of the time).

3. Student gets credit for class.

Bret Taylor "It matters not the subject taught,
Lake-Sumter Community College nor all the books on all the shelves.
Leesburg, FL What matters more, yes most of all,
John 3:3^3+3 is what the teachers are themselves."
John Wooden

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