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Oscar

On 6/19/2012 6:47 AM, X ` Man wrote:
On 6/18/12 9:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 18 Jun 2012 19:48:22 -0400, X ` Man
wrote:

This sounds like "rote learning and memorization" to me: "18 weeks of a
8 hour a day school is equal to about 48 credit hours of
college in classroom time." Not much time to think about what you are
learning and contemplating possibilities.

This was a little different than the set it and forget it education
you get in regular schools. We lived this stuff. I had a side gig
tutoring a couple of the E5s that were in a rate change and
struggling. I wasn't paid but I got good duty.
Those boys were scared because the penalty for failing was a lot worse
for them. I spent a couple hours a night going over the day with
them.. They got me into Cappy's White Horse tavern for a beer after.
I also did not have to get up in the morning for jumping jacks.

The "set it and forget it education you get in regular schools"? Sorry,
I missed out on attending those sorts of schools. I remember a lot of
what I was taught in high school and most of what was covered in my
classes in college, and all my life I've built on that knowledge base.

I even remember funny incidents from classes. One of my electives in
college was German and the associate professor teaching it was a
native-born German whose ideas about World War II were really strange.
He wasn't a ex-Nazi, but he sure was intent on blaming every nation
*except* Germany for that war. He was an excellent teacher, though, and
just the sort of guy you'd want to have beers with on Fridays after the
last classes of the week.

One of the toughest courses I took as an undergrad, one that required a
lot of memorization, was "Shakespeare Rapid Reading." It was an upper
level class and by the time we got to it, most of the students had
already read virtually all of the plays, and simply had to reread them
and prepare an essay on each, which was no big deal for a bunch of
English majors, but the exams every other week were a real bitch. All
those plays, all those characters, all those plot twists, all those
recurring themes...it was like playing chess with a grand master. The
class was taught in one of the oldest buildings on campus, a large
structure built shortly after the Civil War. The steam pipe heating
system really cranked on those cold winter mornings, and many of us
wondered if they would explode and kill us all before we finished the
"required" class, or, if we survived, whether we'd have to repeat the
class in another building.

Funny how your short term memory fails and your long term memory is
sharp as a tack, when you get old.