First Day of Class
Today was my first day of class at Tsinghua. I am teaching a seminar called Frontiers of Psychology. There was only time for about half of the 40-odd students to identify themselves, which included saying their favorite book. Three girls said their favorite book is Pride and Prejudice. Two said The Little Prince. One said Harry Potter. One said Rebecca by Daphne Du Marier (published 1938). One boy said he didn’t have a favorite book — reading books was a waste of time. One boy said his favorite book is Ulysses.
Most of them, perhaps 80%, chose a non-Chinese book as their favorite. One French, two German, the rest English (which they may have read in Chinese translation). At first I was surprised but then I realized it made sense. Chinese civilization was more advanced than European civilization for a long time but when Gutenberg invented the Western version of the printing press everything changed. In Europe, unlike China, books became cheap and literacy spread. With literacy came a book industry. A large number of Europeans have been reading books for 500 years. In contrast, the Chinese language, with thousands of characters (in contrast to 26 lower-case and 26 upper-case letters) made printing difficult. With reading material rare, so was literacy.
September 13th, 2010 at 8:46 am
I considered having students identify themselves on the first day of class but with a class range from 60-180 I thought it would be too cumbersome. Do you do this each time you start a new term? What’s the reaction? I do think that it is a great idea, and would (hopefully) get them involved and more invested in the course, or at least, in learning in general.
September 13th, 2010 at 9:17 am
This seems like a lot of information to absorb in real-time, as students introduce themselves verbally in class. I wonder if it might be more efficient to set up something like a Facebook site, where each student can post their name, photograph, interests, favorite book, etc.
September 13th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I have a facebook site for my class. It doesn’t get as much use as I would like.
September 13th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
I wish I could have been in your class! I would have said my favorite book of all time is: The Shangri-La Diet!
September 14th, 2010 at 5:35 am
Hi Seth,
I just came across this wonderful pedagogical approach and thought i should share it with you. I didnt know where to put it so i put it in the comments. Feel free to delete this comment later.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/exams.pdf
Milieu
September 19th, 2010 at 1:56 am
Dear Professor Roberts,
When and where does your class meet at Tsinghua?’
September 19th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
This class meets Monday 3:20 pm in Teaching Building 6, room 6B108.