Re: CHAT(?): pedagogy (was: RE: [i:]=[ij]? (was Re: Pronouncing "Boreanesia"))

John Cowan:
> On Sat, 4 Nov 2000, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > But I view
> > introductions to phonetics and phonology that make clear and
> > principled distinction between them as an example of the latter
> > approach.
>
> Should "make" be "fail to make"?  If not, I don't get it.
Fuck. I really screwed up there, didn't I. It should be "fail to
make". (Also when I'm teaching & tired I have this perturbing
problem of stating propositions that are the truth conditional
opposite of what I intend to say. I worry about it, but probably
the students are even tireder than I am & aren't listening anyway.)

> > The apparent simplifications the blurring creates
> > must inevitably lead to hopeless confusion until the pedagocial
[pedagocial? I'm turning into jack Durst]

> > ill effects have been expunged. Furthermore, if you simply say
> > "Last Semester you were taught that p is the case. Now forget
> > that p is the case. Now learn that q, not p, is the case", the
> > students get pissed off, for various more or less good reasons.
>
> I think I appreciate your distinction, but how is the student supposed
> to?
The student ideally shouldn't have to, if in the first place they're
taught a preliminary approximation of the Right Thing.

> > I would add though, that, perhaps unlike Science students, the
> > vast majority of the students I encounter are comfortable with
> > the notion that some answers/analyses are true and some false,
> > and with the notion that some answers/analyses are neither true
> > nor false and only subjectively better or worse than one another,
> > but they are deeply uncomfortable with the notion that some
> > answers/analyses are false or of unknown truthvalue but
> > nonetheless are objectively better and worse than one another.
>
> Two wisecracks from physicists, on the the theories of their students
> or junior colleagues:
>
>         "Your theory is crazy -- but not crazy enough to be true." (Nils Bohr)
>
>         "This isn't right .... This isn't even wrong." (Wolfgang Pauli)
>
> > This makes it quite difficult to be upfront about the
> > epistemological status of what one is teaching them.
>
> I have trouble with the notion of "objective" vs. "subjective"
> in this context, but I can't quite articulate why.  A theory
> may be false but convenient -- and the convenience may be for
> almost everybody, or only a few.
By "objective" I mean that there are a reasonably explicit set of criteria
against which answers/analyses can be evaluated, such that the criteria
rather than the evaluator determine the quality of the answer/analysis.

Do you still have trouble?

--And.