Main Entry: ped·a·go·gy
Pronunciation: 'pe-d&-"gO-jE also -"gä-, especially British -"gä-gE
Function: noun
: the art, science, or profession of teaching; especially : EDUCATION 2
I find the variation in teaching styles to be quite astounding.
I have one Dozent (instructor) who routinely comes in late for an early morning class, to which everyone else was early. If he wants to start 15 minutes late, he can, it's his class. He then proceeds to spend the next fifteen minutes summarizing the previous lecture (these are lectures, not discussions), including walking us through whatever theoretical steps we convered the last time, making the previous session completely superfluous. If only he published the cliff notes. The bell rings. He keeps going. Five minutes past. Someone from the next class opens the door, realizes we're not finished, closes it. Ten minutes past. If I had a class after this I'd never make it. By now several people have opened and closed the door, eventually sent on their way with an impatient "we're not finished!". Quarter past............. time stretches out........... I try not to check the time every five seconds because it won't help, he'll let us go when he's good and ready....... I'm sure I'm visibly aging by this point......... and then he summarizes his points, carefully, calmly, as if he had all the time in the world.....
The German collegiate system generally works in a way that all upper division classes are seminars, so you get readings, you read them, you come to class, you discuss them, and for one class period per semester, it's your turn to run the session. And you write a research paper, to be handed in sometimes several months after the semester has ended. These presentations, Referate, they're called, sometimes are about summarizing the assigned texts, intrepreting a piece of literature, or sometimes the students plan the entire session and assign the texts as well. And when it's not your turn, you can more or less check out. Till it comes time for the paper.
Literature: you'd expect the presenters to have intrepeted the piece, have questions for the other students, and would attempt to evoke a discussion. Of course, this is university, where most of the kids just read it right before class, and don't even mention having prepared responses. I admit, I'm one of them. I read the story before class started, and came to the conclusion that the story was about mortality of man (when in doubt, guess one of the following: love, death, or if Kafka, failure). Anyways, instead of following the published set of intrepetation questions prepared by the students, the Dozent just jumps in and redirects the conversation.....then goes off on a tangent.....then insists on arguing whether 'communication' or 'interaction' is a more fitting descriptor. Some people have a deepset need to be right. I admit I can be one of them, but I generally know when to let go. Some people have such a death grip on their opinion that the poor thing will be bruised for weeks. We had a story about a guy who found a spool of thread with legs that could talk, with a lurid visual description (no, hallucinogenics are not issued for this class. They must be obtained independently). Someone tried to draw it. It didn't work out. Several more people, eventually including the Dozent, tried as well. The poor kid trying to run the discussion was looking increasingly disgruntled, eventually just letting the Dozent have his tangent. After 1:15 of tangents and rather useless discussion, we came to the conclusion that the story is about the mortality of man. I could have spared myself the hour and a quarter. I was expecting deep and penetrating discussion, a fierce debate about this or the other thing, and instead we went through it paragraph for paragraph and asked, "what happens here? and here? and here?". And in the last 15 minutes, which turned out to be 25 minutes, we tried to cram in an entire other story....hahaha. hehe. he. no.
Another Dozent sits at the head of the classroom, a long, thin, room, and explains theory. Excellently articulate, this particular Dozent has a penchant for the passive past perfect tense (ex. it had been made), a particuarly complicated form involving three verb particles. This Dozent also talks in such..........a way as to leave long breaks towards the end of.........a sentence, which I believe is just an excuse to try and remember which foms of which verbs are necessary (German has a lot of separable verbs with bits that go at the end, and every time you have a subordinate clause, the verbs all go at the end, in varying order depending on if there are two or three of them. Ex. the dog 'that I saw yesterday' would, in directly translated German in past perfect tense, be: the dog, that yesterday been seen had)
The Dozents do participate in the discussions as well. Some of them stimulate thought and comment, and others kill it like an impaired armadillo on the interstate.
Some Dozents are informal. We're all buds, we address one another by first name, and everything is relaxed and laid back. Others are exquisitely formal, even to the point of rediculousness, and I live in permanent fear of addressing them improperly or forgetting a title. And at the end of every seminar session, you knock on the desk in lieu of clapping.
And I got hit on the head by a frisbee. But that's another story. Want to hear it? You just did.
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2 comments:
wow, how confusing. Are the instructors professors, or grad students, or lecturers, or what? do you think you actually learn anything in your classes, or is learning a function of reading and independent thinking? Sounds like a challenge. do you participate in the discussion? mom
And to think people wonder why America has the best high education system in the world. I mean, what you've just described bears almost no relation to my classes at CU... yeah, ok, after listening to people from around the country and from people who have studied abroad, I'm starting to largely conclude that people become educated despite the educational process. Quite often I suspect the pedagogic experience complicates the actual education of students.
Then again, Kafka is impossible under any circumstances and, barring excessive usage of illegal substances, is a hopeless cause. But I hate cubism and think that 23 minutes of dead silence does not constitute a meaningful peice of music, so perhaps my artisitic tastes are poorly formed.
Finally, I never had an appreciatin for just how much a broken nail hurts until I started really playing frisbee. I've also never kept my nails better trimmed, for just that reason, either.
Mason
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