Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/06/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Brian, And Aristotle and Plato were turning over in their graves... I experienced a similar problem teaching graduate business school. During exams, a number of my students preferred proving their contentions with footnoted parametric spreadsheet analyses, rather than well-reasoned, written arguments. My explanation that you'd never get away with quantitative "nerdiness" in the Board Room was not always persuasive... Ah well, teaching at university is a wonderful experience if it weren't for the students one has to deal with! :-) Len -- -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+ljkapner=cox.net@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+ljkapner=cox.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Brian Reid Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 7:05 PM To: Leica Users Group Subject: [Leica] Writing (was: writing going downhill etc) >> we engineers are notorious for bad writing skills. > > One of the appealing features of the engineering curriculum at my school was a notable lack of coursework that required writing papers. In the 1980s I was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford. One time I assigned a term paper in an upper-level undergraduate class. I take writing seriously; I believe that the ability to communicate a design is as important as the ability to create it in the first place. The students were, in general, outraged. One student filed a formal grievance with the university's ombudsman, claiming that it was unfair to require an engineering student to write a term paper. Although I won the case, I did have to spend a non-zero amount of time defending myself. It didn't hurt that the ombudsman's own field was cultural anthropology. _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information