More on wireless surfing in class

I wasn't intending to spend much more time on the topic of students playing around online while in class, but this morning's paper brought a letter to the editor that neatly encapsulates some common misapprehensions regarding college education:

If college students are distracted, it is because they are bored. If they are bored, it is because the professors are boring.
If professors are boring, it is because they are trained as researching scholars. They are not trained as teachers.
LOUIS SCHMIER

While it is desirable for lecturers to make their material as interesting and digestible as possible, it is no less desirable for students to learn how to remain engaged with material that is not easily digested. There is more to a college education than the transfer of information; ideally, students should also learn how to learn, building up their capacity to extract and absorb knowledge wherever it may be found. Sometimes essential knowledge, whether in academia or the outside world, simply isn't available in user-friendly form.

This is not to say that professors can do no wrong; I've suffered through more than my share of rambling, badly-organized lectures. But where is the evidence that things would be better if future professors were trained as teachers, rather than as experts in their fields? That approach sounds a little too much like how American public school teachers are trained: heavy on the methodology, light on the concrete knowledge. So give us professors who know their stuff, even if their lectures are hard to follow and delivered in a soporific monotone. Better solid information badly packaged than a pretty box with nothing inside.

Posted by David on January 4, 2003 2:27 PM