This author is currently on hiatus for the ignoble cause of mugging. The public is advised to remain calm, as this routine protocol has been shown to have no effect on one's violent tendencies in 96% of cases.
| Monday, September 18, 2006 |
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My group was supposed to do a Maths presentation on cylic quadrilaterals today. The estimated time we were supposed to take was half an hour. In the end, we used up the whole period (40 mins), and couldn't even get past the first part of our presentation. This was due to Tiansheng (our first presenter), the Maths pro who had received extra training at NUS b4, spending way too much time on complicated proofs which no one could understand. His diagrams were also horrible, extremely messy and confusing with all the lines criscrossing about. Well, what can you expect from MS Word? Later, towards the end, when everybody got extremely sian of listening to TS natter away and gave up trying to understand what he was saying, Derek suddenly cut into his presentation, drew a diagram on the board, explained it in one sentence and everyone was able to understand him. So in one minute, Derek managed to explain clearly the proof TS had been trying to explain for 10 mins. And Derek saved the day. This incident highlights the question: Does special training, especially with experts like professors, cause you to be unable to connect with the other average people? This is because one would definitely learn some cheem jargon from the experts, and one would then subconciously use it in your work, however one does forget that the other people who have not learnt that much would not be able to understand him. In short, such special training would cause you to become more like the experts and professors, who become isolated in a world of their own due to their cheem language. My answer to that is: No. It does not happen all of the time. Derek also went through the same special training with TS, yet he could still teach brilliantly. This is because of the ability and skill to translate all the jargon you learn into simple concepts which are understandable by other people of lower standards. Such jargon is useless except for when you communicate with other experts, which are sadly only a minority of the total human population. To adapt a quote from Mr. Warren Liew's letter to the ST Forum regarding the teaching of English in our education system: The best Maths students need not necessarily be the best Maths teachers, and similarly, conversely so. So basically, what it means is that even if you are good in Maths, you may not be good at passing on your knowledge to others. Similarly, even if you are a good Maths teacher, you might actually be weak in Maths. Having gone through SIMO training at NUS myself, I can certainly say that it does increase your knowledge of Maths. However, how you apply this knowledge is a different matter. Would you choose to give complicated proofs that cover every single (unnecessary) aspect of the question so that it is flawless, and then receive recognition for your wonderful proof in some Maths or Science magazine. Or would you rather just make things simple, cut away the need for extra unnecessary workings, present your answers in a way such that others are able to understand you, and pass on your knowledge to others. That is the clear distinction between professors and teachers. |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:01 pm.
