Posted by Rick Denney on November 28, 2001 at 11:14:01:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Gross injustices posted by Kenneth Sloan on November 28, 2001 at 02:45:52:
Yeah, what he said.
You'll note that I did not blame the professors in my architecture labs, even though I do believe that they put very little effort into articulating what they do, or, alternatively, providing a cogent example of what they do. They were too "overloaded" (which in many cases meant too lazy) to be mentors to we apprentices, and too inarticulate to be teachers to we students. In the end, they wanted the students who would "get it" without having it explained, and I suspect they share much with music professors in that attitude.
If you believe in the existence of talent, which I definitely do, then you can hardly blame them. In architecture school, I had a great talent for presentation, but not enough for design. This didn't become really apparent until the end of my junior year, and no amount of extra time would have overcome that lack. In engineering school, I was able to do much more design than I'd ever been able to do in architecture, and that design conformed to the sorts of mental processes at which I excelled. Ken is right, colleges are called universities because they provide a universe of opportunity. The college students must take advantage of those opporunities. Our college-level teaching in the U.S. must be good at something, because people come here from all over the world to take advantage of them. Too bad our primary and secondary schools can't share some of that success.
Rick "who agrees that the most highly respected schools are the least involved in job training" Denney