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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
This is something that kinda bugs me about physics students, actually.
They hold the mistaken conception that their books and professors know True things, and that their role as a student is to memorize these things. To the extent that their grade depends on learning what the book/professor are telling them, this makes some kind of sense. Add in that they are barely adults - just beginning to enter a world outside the loving shelter of their parents - and you see their motivation to blindly trust authority figures.
However, books and professors are not gifted with any power to divine Truths. They are just as fallible as any source of information. Trusting in their methods is only good for a layman's understanding of some of the techniques. It's when you understand that the complex methods are built out of simple assumptions that you see the power and limitations of what you've learned.
I mean... math books have typos, too. Sometimes it's those typos that slow me to a stop and force me to derive something. It's my active involvement in connecting what I think I understand with this new information which is the real learning. Sussing out that the typo is a false statement is indicative of the whole point of learning the theories and methods in play.
The more theory you know, the less of the derivative stuff you need to memorize, and the more you can figure out on your own - from more simple assumptions, no less.
Interesting point. It is possible I disagree with this (assuming I understand where you're coming from). I have batted around the idea -- it's where my position currently is -- that all undergraduate-and-below education should be geared towards the idea that things are known by academics and those things are imparted to students. It is at graduate and post-grad level that the students begin to add to the total knowledge of academia, and thus they should do more than just learn what is already known. I tend to disagree with instructors trying to get students to give assessment of what they think about a topic until after they already can pull from a barrel of knowledge that the field considers consensus. For example, in my principles of macroeconomics class, our professor often asked us to say how we thought a certain factor would affect other factors. I think this is a waste of time. I need to be told to memorize and apply what the professor already knows about the factors and their effects, and after I've done that I can then impart my own wisdom or lack thereof to the topic.
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