From: me@yahoo.com   
      
   On 2025-09-22 15:00:21 +0000, RonO said:   
      
   > On 9/22/2025 2:44 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:   
   >> On 2025-09-21 21:28:19 +0000, William Hyde said:   
   >>   
   >>> Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:   
   >>>> On 2025-09-21 16:57:26 +0000, RonO said:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> [ … ]   
   >>>>   
   >>>>> As an assistant professor I was required to do public education   
   >>>>> outreach as part of my job.  I started doing projects at my kid's   
   >>>>> elementary schools.  I'd bring in an incubator and hatch some   
   >>>>> chicks. In middle school we did some embryology along with hatching the   
   >>>>> chicks.  I stopped in middle school.  Anyone could likely repeat   
   >>>>> what I did and find the same thing that I discovered.  The kids   
   >>>>> start out as sponges in kindergarten.  You have trouble keeping them   
   >>>>> from asking questions over each other.  They want to understand just   
   >>>>> about everything down to how the incubator works.  This type of   
   >>>>> inquiry slowly gets beaten out of them as they are taught to take the   
   >>>>> tests instead of learn anything.  It would tick me off when a   
   >>>>> college student would interrupt a lecture to ask if what was under   
   >>>>> discussion was going to be on the test.  What I found out was that   
   >>>>> this behavior was ingrained into the students by middle school.    
   >>>>> Most of the students in middle school were no longer interested in   
   >>>>> learning something new, but they wanted to know what would be on the   
   >>>>> test.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> In 1977 I spent a winter quarter teaching a Master's Course on enzyme   
   >>>> kinetics at the University of Guelph.   
   >>>   
   >>> A high school friend of mine, Linda Sadler, was planning on a   
   >>> biochemistry degree at Guelph.  If she went on to to a Master's, she   
   >>> might have been in your course.   
   >>   
   >> I don't recognize the name, but after nearly half a century the memory   
   fades.   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>   Two vignettes from that experience:   
   >>>>   
   >>>> 1. Guelph is not the most exciting place to spend a winter weekend   
   >>>> alone, and every Friday  night I took the bus to Toronto, where I   
   >>>> spent a couple of nights staying with my aunt. I was typically the only   
   >>>> non-student in the bus, and I had a lot of opportunity to find out what   
   >>>> students talked about when there were no professors around. They didn't   
   >>>> talk about football; they didn't talk about ice hockey; they didn't   
   >>>> talk about romantic engagements; they didn't talk about films they had   
   >>>> seen; they didn't talk about vacations; they didn't talk about books   
   >>>> they had read. They talked EXCLUSIVELY about what had been in last   
   >>>> week's test and what they thought would be in next week's test. That   
   >>>> was it.   
   >>>   
   >>> At exactly that time I took a very similar ride from Toronto to Waterloo.   
   >>>   
   >>> While I mostly read, I do recall one conversation that lasted the whole   
   >>> trip, about Bonaparte and Hitler.  The people I was talking with were   
   >>> history students and were genuinely interested in the topic.  Of   
   >>> course, as history students they were plagued with essays, not weekly   
   >>> tests.   
   >>>   
   >>> On the other hand, I did tutor (in the North American sense, i.e.   
   >>> basically taught a class rather than properly tutoring) mathematics and   
   >>> found that the pre-med students were only interested in getting the   
   >>> highest possible marks, for which I cannot blame them given the absurd   
   >>> admission requirements of the time.  Only a few students were at all   
   >>> interested in the subject, one of them a future lawyer.  I kept him in   
   >>> mind in case I ever needed a good lawyer, resolved to keep away from   
   >>> them if I needed a doctor.   
   >>>   
   >>> When I arrived at a university in Texas as a postdoc, I found that the   
   >>> faculty was almost entirely American.  But, aside from those sent us   
   >>> by the military, the grad students were almost entirely foreign.   
   >>>   
   >>> In my group there were three postdocs and six grad students, hailing   
   >>> from Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and  Canada.   
   >>>   
   >>> The irony of this is that my supervisor had chosen a position in  Texas   
   >>> in part because he noticed that undergrad physics students in local   
   >>> universities didn't go on to grad school.  Many went into banking or   
   >>> stockbroking instead.  He felt that by livening up our department he   
   >>> might attract some.  But no.   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>> 2. In the course of the second lecture I mentioned that Maud Menten was   
   >>>> the first woman and maybe the first Canadian to make a major mark in   
   >>>> biochemistry. About half the students were women, and virtually all   
   >>>> were Canadian, but from the looks on their faces they were all thinking   
   >>>> the same thing: why is he telling us this stuff that is not likely to   
   >>>> be in the exam? There were two professors auditing the course (probably   
   >>>> reporting to the department  on my qualiies as a teacher, but I was   
   >>>> too naive to think that at the time; I thought they were just   
   >>>> interested). Both of them agreed that my interpretation of the   
   >>>> students' reaction was correct. (In 1977 very few people knew that Maud   
   >>>> Menten was a Canadian woman.)   
   >>>   
      
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