BF2S Forums College/University Homework Help Thread v1.0

Dilbert_X wrote:

You're just hilarious, I recommend you become a teacher.

Spoiler (highlight to read):
Of how to mix anus fruitshakes

Spoiler (highlight to read):
using your own anus

Uzique wrote:

what is it with this forum's engineers thinking they have god's gift of genius and that every other path in life is useless, and that their own accomplishments are from pure god-given talent?

It's because they build stuff like the great pyramids. Not as if they just install insulation.

teaching is intellectually stretching. sure you're not working at the pioneering fringes of your field, but it still demands a very astute and intelligent person to be able to package and communicate knowledge to somebody else. pedagogy is one of the great intellectual skills. why do you think plato, aristotle and socrates put such high worth in it? guess they hadn't thought about taking an engineering degree...

just because you're not doing PhD-level stuff (you aren't in your everyday life, guess you're a lazy half-dumb slacker too, then) it doesn't mean you aren't doing something intelligent. of all the professions and careers in the world i'd say teaching is the one most directly associated with 'intellectual' work: your entire job is to convey information and to build intellect in other people - to teach them how to think. what is more intellectual than that? it's funny because you shun the ivory-tower academics with their lofty insular world of esoteric, arcane super-scholarly stuff, which you think is "irrelevant" to the "real world"... but then you shun the pragmatic, down-to-earth, 'basics' teachers that deal in the fundamentals of learning, too. so it seems to me that nobody that works in an intellectual job can please you at all. everyone should be engineers. right.

Dilbert_X wrote:

"Those who can't do, teach" Its a widely accepted expression, go ahead and disprove it.

Shouldn't you attempt to prove it first dilbert? Kinda like a Christian saying god is widely accepted go ahead and disprove him.

Dilbert_X wrote:

In theory teaching is valuable, its just the people who end up doing it...

... do what?

Also, fixed.

"Those who can't do, teach" Its a widely accepted expression, go ahead and disprove it.

It is a widely "accepted" expression in some fields, which doesn't make it correct. No reason to disprove that. I've had a professor that fell back onto teaching when he couldn't get a job doing what he taught.

But "those who can't do, teach" is one of those catchy expressions that sounds right only if you don't think about it. Teaching in itself is doing.

Uzique wrote:

i have never heard that expression so how is it "widely accepted"?

It varies from field to field, but seems most prevalent in practical applications work, where it gets bandied about with not a small amount of bitterness. If you take an electrical engineering course, I bet you'd hear it at some point, either self-deprecatingly from the professor or seriously from the students (especially ones being retrained).

And it's always kind of pissed me off.

Uzique wrote:

i'm in academia interacting with people that are possibly of the highest eminent qualification in the world in their respective fields... no, we don't hear the expression "those who can't do, teach". my experience of teaching through public school and now university has been quite the opposite: those who can do very well, indeed do teach.

But you have no experience outside that world.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Uzique wrote:

i'm in academia interacting with people that are possibly of the highest eminent qualification in the world in their respective fields... no, we don't hear the expression "those who can't do, teach". my experience of teaching through public school and now university has been quite the opposite: those who can do very well, indeed do teach.

But you have no experience outside that world.

And some engineers have no experience outside their world. Some pizza delivery men have no experience outside theirs.

The point is, teaching is a profession, and by doing it you are doing something. Instead of manufacturing fake poop, you're manufacturing a marketable workforce. Whether it's from the very beginning, or by putting on the final touches is beside the point.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

In theory teaching is valuable, its just the people who end up doing it...

... do what?

Also, fixed.

"Those who can't do, teach" Its a widely accepted expression, go ahead and disprove it.

It is a widely "accepted" expression in some fields, which doesn't make it correct. No reason to disprove that. I've had a professor that fell back onto teaching when he couldn't get a job doing what he taught.

But "those who can't do, teach" is one of those catchy expressions that sounds right only if you don't think about it. Teaching in itself is doing.

Uzique wrote:

i have never heard that expression so how is it "widely accepted"?

It varies from field to field, but seems most prevalent in practical applications work, where it gets bandied about with not a small amount of bitterness. If you take an electrical engineering course, I bet you'd hear it at some point, either self-deprecatingly from the professor or seriously from the students (especially ones being retrained).

And it's always kind of pissed me off.

It depends. If the teacher is spending time in their off hours advancing their knowledge of the subject in order to have more information to offer his/her students then that is a good teacher. Most of the teachers I've known have simply regurgitated whatever textbook the district/university handed to them. Less than useful.

Jay wrote:

Uzique wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Teaching/academia - its the same side of the same coin, and you're the one who keeps bringing up engineering, not me.


In theory teaching is valuable, its just the people who end up doing it... and school-teaching doesn't really compare with Athenian philosophy.

"Those who can't do, teach" Its a widely accepted expression, go ahead and disprove it.

serious derp mode engaged. i have never heard that expression so how is it "widely accepted"?

teachers are respectable people commanding a middle-class wage and lifestyle, giving something back to society. what's the problem? teaching is even more vital than academia, imo. some of the most influential and inspiring people that i have met have been fantastic teachers, with an ability to bring out the best in people and really make you think. why is that lowly? tbh i'd rate all of my teachers as infinitely more successful people than yo. the fact that they're not spending their middle-age making snide twattish comments on a video-game forum says a lot.

Oh don't do that. They aren't altruists by any means.

well of course everyone is motivated at a basic level to pay their rent, buy food, provide for themselves and their family... the point is that teaching, almost more than any other profession, gives something back. i'm not saying they're working for free, or that their every thought and motive originates from a desire to give yourself to the greater good-- teachers aren't saints. the point is that they're doing a lot more good and putting a lot more back into the societal cycle than some engineer that only decided to go into his job because it provides a big paypacket. teachers have a pretty shitty, stressful job at times and their wage is pretty modest in comparison to alternative jobs at the same level (here in the uk, anyway, which is mostly to do with the state-sector). i don't think there's anything ignoble in teaching, let alone it being a refuge for the dim and lazy, as dilbert seems to think. some of my teachers could quit and become authors, full-time, and make loads more money... instead, they love pedagogy, they love teaching, they love inspiring a new generation, and they love the advancement of knowledge through research. and what's wrong with that!

and dilbert you are honestly just a big ball of paradoxes. you contradict yourself at every turn. sure, excellent teachers and enthusiastic students may have never been outside of academia... but so what? you've never been outside of your field. for anyone to be truly top-class at what they do, OF COURSE they have to focus in on one speciality and one path. what's the goddamn problem, again? you'd just bitch and moan if somebody had dabbled in a few careers, too - they'd be "indecisive" then or perhaps too "rubbish" to cope at any real long-term career plan. pssht. you're a hack. what are you doing that's so great again? oh, okay. i just love the myopic egomania here that basically infers at every point "what i'm doing is perfectly good and a valuable use of one's life - what everyone else chooses to do is ridden with errors and bad judgements".

My criminal law professor has probably been my favorite. Very smart, knows a lot about laws regarding police work because he's been an officer for 28 years, has a JD, very engaging, very upstanding. Great person all around. My physics professor has also been pretty awesome.

that doesn't really work for academic subjects though, does it? law has an academic side in the study of jurisprudence, with concepts of justice being explored philosophically, but isn't really what you'd call an 'academic' subject. the same with a lot of science, which obviously has a very practical side to it as well as the abstract. how does that rule work in the 'hard' academics subjects, like philosophy, literature, history, or classics? you can't really expect a great philosophy teacher to have "been a philosopher" for severla years before entering the field, haha. some people are just great teachers, i don't think it has so much to do with working in industry. nine out of ten people you dragged from an industry-position into teaching would be shit at it-- they'd lack the charisma, or the drive, or the ability to communicate. i don't think you have to work outside of your field to be good at teaching in academia. in fact, my best teachers are those that have been involved in the absolute best in academia-- as you'd more normally expect.

Hurricane2k9 wrote:

@Jay that's an interesting point, but I have also had professors for academic subjects who were quite engaging. I took a "contemporary moral issues" course last fall and the professor was really, really good. My US history teacher in high school was awesome, as was one of my English teachers.

I've always viewed teaching as something that should be left for people nearing retirement age. If anyone has something to pass on, it's them. What can a 22-24 year old fresh out of college teach anyone? Nothing really.