[thechat] skools

Andrew Forsberg andrew at thepander.co.nz
Tue Jan 29 17:00:00 CST 2002


>(Who once had an hourly job tutoring math at a University when two
>graduating Education majors came in asking about associativity.  "Great
>question!", said I, "Hmmm .. I wonder what the best way to 'teach'
>associativity would be?!" "No sir",  said they, "you misunderstand, we
>want to know what associativity is". {I was pretty much appalled,
>knowing that three months later - these folks would be out in the world
>teaching your kids. [However, these folks didn't feel bad at all about
>this - cuz after all - they were gonna be teaching 'science' ... and not
>'math'.]})

LOL!

My undergrad and grad part time jobs were in libraries, and the worst
-- I mean the "I'm gonna bite right through my hand and the counter
held in an iron grip of fear and loathing" WORST -- patrons were
education students. And the worst of that lot were the graduate
education students.

I'll never forget one of them: she pushed her way to the front of the
queue to shout "FREIRE!" at me. While I knew where Freire's books
were on the shelves behind me (this was a short one to two hour loan
service, and it could only have been one of two or three books by
Paulo Freire, or maybe a secondary text) I said that we require a
Dewey decimal code in order to retrieve books (which is true, as we
had roughly 90 to 210 patrons through per hour). I swear to god, she
just stared blankly at me for 4 or 5 seconds, then started peering
around behind the counter to see if she could find a familiar spine
on the shelves. She said: that's it; I corrected: no, those are books
about logic. Why don't you look up the book you want on one of the
computers over there and bring the dewey code back to the counter.

Anyhow, long story short: she had no idea whatsoever what a dewey
decimal code was. She was a graduate student of education who had
been at the university for over 5 years and, worse still, was soon to
graduate in order to become either: a) a university lecturer of
education; b) a secondary school senior staff member; or c) a
headmaster.

No department in the entire university had such a poor reputation
amongst the library staff, either part time or full time. Ugh!

Andrew

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