School.
It's not for everyone, I suppose. Or more precisely, not all teaching styles are equal and there are some I actively despise.
One in particular.
The Master of Irrelevant Detail.
I know I'm not one to talk. I collect junk trivia like anyone else. Want to know the opcode for no-operation on the 6502? I haven't used that architecture for almost twenty years, but I think I remember that code. 0xEA. The 0xAD and 0xA9 were, I believe, manipulations of the A register.
I could be wrong, of course. I haven't used these for ages.
So I started this term taking two classes, both of which were "self paced". Anthropology, which looks like a lot of fun, and Geography of cities, which was there so why not? These were the only two self-paced we could find this term.
After reading the two assigned chapters in Geography, I though the content in the book was pretty light, but heck, it did talk about the development of North American cities, so I'm good.
I wander in to the test. I'm wondering how he is going to get forty questions out of these chapters. I figure he will have to get down to trivia, like naming the five boroughs of New York. While these aren't really relevant, the data was in there.
Otherwise, I expected to have him ask about the growth patterns of the city, percentage of urban population now and 100 years ago, _relevant_ stuff. Or at least, nearly relevant.
I glanced over the test and walked out.
I can see, I suppose, asking where Machu Pichu was (South America, in the Andes), though that isn't terribly relevant to the development of North American cities that the _rest_ of the work focused on. But it was mentioned, in a brief aside, near the front of the book.
But what relevance does the question "Who wrote poetry and the city?" have? I had to search through both chapters, out of morbid curiosity, to even see what he was talking about. Was there a side-box labeled "Poerty and the City"? No. There was this paragraph, however:
"US Poet John Ciardi (1959, chap. 1) believed that we also need to consider the mood the poem creates in us, its readers, as well as the deeper subtleties conveyed in how the poem's words play together. Our concern, wrote Ciardi, should not be 'to arrive at a definition and close the book, but to arrive at an experience.'"
Yeah, I can see now that it could be a question on a test for the really anal. But reading this in the _introduction_ of the book, Chapter 1 which just gives an overview of the subject, it really didn't seem interesting or relevant.
Maybe it's just me. But looking over the test, briefly, the other questions didn't seem to deal with the meat of the material, but with the sidelines, the irrelevant details. Only those two questions stuck in my mind, though.
Hell freezes over before I take a class that requires me to memorize every name, date, and reference on every page. I want to learn the subject, not memorize textbooks.
I dropped the subject.
On the other hand, Anthropology looks like a good class. Sure, I'll be memorizing a million obscure latin and greek words as I struggle through the classification of primates, but at least those details are _relevant_, they are the language of the subject.
I don't mind work when it has a point.
Teachers often have the misguided belief that each student has, or should have, the same passion to learn every little nuance or subtle side-track of their subject.
This teacher got his PhD almost 35 years ago; he's probably been teaching this for twenty or thirty years. He is clearly deeply immersed in the subject.
But if I want to learn about poets, I will take a class that is _not_ called "Intro to Urban Geography". Teach me the subject, and the subject is Geography. Urban Geography. The growth and development of cities.
And make the tests to the point.
I suppose I'm just being over-excitable here. I've been a bit stressed, and this just put me over the edge.
The Master of Irrelevant Details.
Fortunately, I don't have to put up with that crap.