. . . . . 2. One concludes that performance in math courses is only marginally a classroom issue. (Also, it is predominately not a department issue, but rather a math/science interdisciplinary issue.)
. . . . . 3. The instructor sets the level of aspirations in the course, one that should be reasonable yet high, and it must get backed up with sufficiently competent lectures. Nothing heroic is necessary.
. . . . . 4. The students must be led to believe that said level is reasonable.
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Here is something that an academic dean can say to the entering students to set a helpful academic tone. Note that there is nothing that explicitly refers to mathematics [or the sciences]. You, the students entering the University this year, are a talented group. Still, you will need to adjust to being in college, both socially and academically. The standards of education change substantially from high school to college. Notions of reasonable workload and reasonable effort change drastically. High school, effectively mandatory, is commonly run so that all attentive students can pass without exertion. College education is voluntary, and is set up so that most students can learn well with serious but non-excessive exertion outside of class. Two hours outside of class (reading, homework, etc.) for each hour in class is a normal amount of work in a college course, while in most high schools that would be preposterous. In every discipline, the aspiration in college is that the students learn flexibly, so that they gain the capability to apply what they have learned in new situations. This is the case even in subjects where teaching and learning in high school is least flexible (because of the different goals of high school, as just described).
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Steven Zucker
July 30, 1999