Higher education in the United States is not as perfect as you think (Wang Yin has come to approve the education in the old United States ))

Email area: newexpress
Question: Dr. Wang Miao, a retired student from Tsinghua, scolded the United States for Chinese education and began to scold the United States... LOL
Mailing station: shuimu community (Tue Feb 12 23:59:09 2008), within the station

Talent... laugh at me...
Sender: CDR (readable and writable), email area: Overseas
Question: How does Cornell feel)
Mailing station: BBS untitled Space Station (Mon Feb 11 22:40:42 2008)

Author: Wang Yin

Http://shredderyin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns! 73ff08d72187ce2e! 5259. Entry
Cornell feelings (1)
Some people have asked me about my learning situation and whether I have found an ideal research environment. I have always made some small animals, or I want to share some interesting content here. It's really embarrassing, because I have always felt that I have no right to speak, and I have always thought that I was wrong. But Cornell has been here for a year and a half, and I can also say my thoughts on American education. I may feel wrong, or limited to my major or school. However, the general feeling is that most American education is commercial exam-oriented education, while foreign graduate students are basically cheap labor forces used to cheat undergraduates in money. What undergraduates can learn is less and less than what they pay. The huge pressure on homework and exams has deprived students of the freedom to think. It is hard to find an environment where they study hard.

Let me remember my experience over the past year and a half ......

In, we arrived at Ithaca after more than 20 hours of flight. In the face of this village, we are very novel. The summer here is so beautiful, green grass everywhere, waterfall everywhere, tap water can be directly drunk, and all the rooms have carpets. It seems that everything is so beautiful, and people are so polite. As soon as I got to the sidewalk, the car on the road slowly stopped to let pedestrians cross the road. When I met someone I didn't know on the road, he would say "Isn't it beauul ul ?" In short, the beauty of Ithaca is needless to say, and the overall quality of residents is still relatively high. But soon, this freshness disappears with the various things that Cornell encountered. Cornell gave me a very bad first impression.

In fact, the official start of the school is on the 20th day. The reason we came so early was that we needed to participate in a so-called itadp summer program. Itadp is the international teaching assistant development program, which is the TA training. This training is mandatory. If you do not participate in the training, you will not be able to do TA, and you will not receive financial support. Before we even had time difference, we took this course, from nine o'clock A.M. to three o'clock P.M. every day. I do not remember that they mentioned this thing when applying for Cornell. Instead, they received a letter saying that they wanted all foreign TAS to attend the training after they received the offer. I did not expect Cornell's impression to be lost in my mind.

First, Chinese students who have been trained or are still suffering from training courses hate this thing. We come to the same conclusion that this training has little effect on improving the English proficiency, and it is a waste of time and effort. There is only one week of training in the summer, and the class is divided into small classes. The teacher will evaluate the training at the end of the training. If you fail, you need to take a required course called Educ 578. Educ 578 has an assessment at the end of the period. If it fails, you need to repair Educ 579. The next step is Educ 580,... the course number is changed, but the course content is basically not changed, and it keeps repeating and getting bored. In short, this course consumes a lot of energy and affects your studies. Most Chinese students complain about this course. A lot of people have been sitting on the foundation, but they haven't passed it for two years. If you really want to stay, it would be nice. The situations vary with different systems. I know a doctoral student from the electronics department who was canceled his financial support when his first evaluation failed. He had to pay for his master's degree in computer science.

Let's take a look at the nature of this course? I still remember what the main person in charge of itadp told us during the summer program: "You know why you are here? ... You know how important the undergraduate students are to us? You might even find a Prince or Princess in your class one day, from another country! That tone is similar to the big boss. We are Ivy! It's an aristocratic school! Isn't this clearly exposing our purpose? It serves the "princesses" and "princes" of the undergraduate course. Later, I heard that this is indeed the case. This itadp was established at the strong demand of undergraduates. The princes and princesses may still not get what they want.

This course cannot be left blank. If you skip two classes, you will lose fail, thus canceling the TA qualification. You cannot be late for this lesson. Otherwise, the teacher will warn you when you finish the lesson and fail will be given to you if you are late again. The rules for this lesson are so strict that they are really special. No professional or non-professional courses have such military management. Let's take a look at the content of this course. In fact, the main content is to tell everyone what is good teaching and what is bad. Most of them are nonsense. I remember when talking about education, I mentioned that a good teacher should guide students to think and tell them how knowledge is obtained, instead of instilling it into students. It should relieve the pressure on students, encourage them to innovate. As a result, the teacher was confused about these statements. Apparently, she did not predict what I said. What she expected was not to write too small words on the blackboard.

Then we will do a lot of so-called microteaching exercises. Microteaching is to teach other students in the class some of their most basic professional knowledge. For me, the first time I spoke about Binary Trees. This exercise has some advantages, that is, it makes me understand that many times the teacher thinks that the students understand it. In fact, the teacher only knows that he understands it, but does not know that the students actually don't understand it. However, I later found that Cornell's undergraduate students basically cannot know whether they understand it or not. Whether it's my lectures or my lectures with undergraduates, it's common: After a wonderful story, the teacher asked, "Do you understand ?" No one said. Ask: "Raise your hand if someone doesn't understand it ." No one raised his hand, and it was silent. The teacher had no choice but to continue. In short, everyone thinks that everyone else understands and is afraid that others will not understand jokes. They feel very similar to High School in China. However, in general, microteaching is very effort-consuming. It's okay to talk about it once or twice. It's annoying to do it repeatedly. The other content of the course is to record your own words, every 10 minutes or more, one Wednesday, you must submit your comments to the teacher in time. This is helpful for English, but it takes too much time. It usually takes one or two hours to prepare for that 10 minutes. I often cannot find interesting topics, so I feel bored.

Because in the first phase, a professor in the department happened to give me an RA, so I didn't participate in Educ 578 (of course, like all Chinese students, I did not pass the evaluation in the summer), so I was forced to take this course in the second stage. Every week, this course consumes so much energy that the only theoretical course I chose in the second phase was not completed. On the one hand, this is also because of the problem of the instructor, he will only write the theorem on the blackboard ...... Prove ...... So then I dropped the course from the legendary cool-man, so that I only took the itadp course in the second phase. I don't think it is a course in a department, so I took one semester.

Fortunately, I am doing well. Every time I look very positive, I am very cooperative with the teacher. In fact, I am scolded for this program. At the same time, I also sympathize with the teacher because she is also a part-time employee. After talking about this lesson for so long, she felt a little bored. Although she didn't say it, she was lucky to have barely passed the evaluation at the end of the semester, you will no longer need to take that terrible lesson. But I still don't know how many Chinese students are still suffering from itadp ......

Http://shredderyin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns! 73ff08d72187ce2e! 5261. Entry
Cornell feelings (2)
Let's talk about undergraduate education, because I feel that "Prince" and "princess" are actually quite bitter, almost the same as going to high school in China. Because Cornell has too many undergraduates and has more than 20 thousand students, everyone can take any basic course, so it is often crowded. I am a CS 100 M TA in the first semester. M is the most basic programming class. The first half is matlab and the last half is Java. Tian knows how Matlab is taught as a "Programming Language", so that in the last half of the time, students are often misled by MATLAB, using that way of thinking to write Java. But now M has removed the Java content and has become a pure MATLAB course. To learn Java, go to 100j.

There were more than 280 registered students in that phase. I went to the first class once, and the professor asked us to meet the students. As a result, I only went to two Tas, and a large auditorium filled with people. The professor almost didn't know where I was. The students are very ignorant, so the teacher basically has nothing to do with what to say. Because there is basically no interaction, it is better to use a camera to take a picture, so that students can go back and watch it again if they do not understand it. But I know they won't do that, or everyone else won't come to class.

We have a total of 9 TA and 10 or more undergraduate consultant, responsible for correcting assignments, exam and Q &. Programming assignments are performed twice on two Mondays, with two midterm exams and one final exam. After each assignment is submitted, you will begin to organize the correction without interruption. The three tests were even more military. Every time they were closed exams, they were all full upstairs and downstairs in a large auditorium. Test ...... After the invigilation, everyone collects the examination papers in batches by name and letters, and then "delivers" them to a room to start their homework. Draw a process table on the blackboard, and then draw an X on it after a letter is changed. Generally, tasks can be completed only after half past nine am.

I am very compassionate in changing my homework. I cannot bear to deduct points for a small mistake. If the idea is correct, I will not deduct a lot of points. But not all of them are so good. Some of them are especially tricky and will try to deduct the points to show that they know more than others. If you want to score again, you must submit a written application. Many senior courses still have class names. Some of them have assignments every week and need to submit assignments in the classroom. If they are late, they will be rejected without discussion. Some assignments need to separate each question in different envelopes so that they can be easily assigned to ta, and each person can only change one question. Everything is mechanized. So undergraduates basically live in fear of homework, exams, and scores. In such an environment, the so-called Western critical thinking is just a joke. I have never met this kind of treatment in Sichuan University. Now, I want to compare it with Sichuan University.

Ta is assessed by students during and at the end of each semester. It will rate all aspects. But I have never seen this score play any role. It is also said that Cornell has a variety of strange implicit charging practices for undergraduates to increase revenue, because the school has a large budget deficit.
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