In article <4c4g2u$54j@life.ai.mit.edu>, David Baggett <dmb@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <4c2api$a9t@grid.direct.ca>, Neil K. Guy <nkg@grid.direct.ca> wrote:
>>Magnus Olsson (mol@marvin.df.lth.se) wrote:
>>>[very atypical anti-American rhetoric deleted]
>
>>I think that's a pretty accurate cultural observation. One that may
>>offend some Americans, but in my experience valid.
>
>I really can't believe I'm reading this kind of stuff from you two.
>Tell me you had a bad day, please!
Of course, I can't answer for Neil's comments, but I'm really sorry
for formulating my comments about American textbooks in that way.
What I wrote wasn't intended as "anti-American rhetoric" in any way,
just as an observation that there are cultural differences between the
educational systems in different countries.
I was not criticizing the American educational system, or even
American textbooks. I apologize if my comments can be interpreted
that way.
I'm sure there are tendencies towards "spoon-feeding" in all
educational systems. The reason I brought up American calculus text
books was that we had some problems a few years ago in Lund, when we
switched textbooks from a Swedish one (written in the French
tradition, and aimed at students with a solid grounding in caclulus
from high school) to an American college text where the exercises were
indeed of the character "here are 300 polynomials; differentiate them".
This particular textbook is perhaps not typical of American textbooks,
and it is of course blatantly unfair to generalize from one book to
American books in general (I suppose I got carried away by my rhetoric,
which wasn't intended to be anti-American, just anti-spoonfeeding).
However, my personal experience of American textbooks (and in physics,
CS, and maths, Swedish universities use *lots* of American textbooks) is
that there is a difference, due to different traditions, different
educational systems, and so on.
I do *not*, repeat *not*, think that American textbooks in general are
worse than their European counterparts, just that they're different.
To get back to the point, what I was trying to say was that the anonymous
criticism that Graham's exercises are "unfair" was probably caused by
the fact that the writer was used to a different meaning of the word
"exercise". I'm really sorry that this turned into an attack on the
American educational system - that wasn't my intention.
Finally, my comparison of Oxford to American schools was not intended
as a value judgment. I'm not saying that the teching at Oxford is a
better than at, say, Harvard or MIT, just that it's different. (I do
think that the teaching at Oxford is better than at most American
small college, but then the teachign at Oxford is better than at most
small European universities as well). Graham is an Oxford don and his
pedagogical style may very well cause cultural shock in unsuspecting
American readers.
>Sorry, but childish TADS vs. Inform politics are one thing. Negative
>generalizations about entire continents are quite another!
I'm sorry to see that my remarks about text books are interpreted as
"negative generalizations about entire continents", but the fault
is of course mine for not expressing myself more carefully. I apologize
to all Americans.
>For the record, I thought the anonymous criticisms were almost entirely
>constructive (and usefully specific), acerbic as they may have been.
...and I agree. The non-constructive parts were the whining about
unfairness, and the personal attacks on Graham, which were totally
uncalled for. My post was actually an attempt to explain the "unfair
exercises" as a cultural difference, not a flame against Americans.
Magnus