TITLE: Teaching Yourself the Material
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 25, 2021  4:18 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 A common complaint from students is that the professor makes
 them teach themselves then material.

 From
<a href="https://rtalbert.org/in-defense-of-teaching-yourself-the-material/">
   In Defense of Teaching Yourself the Material</a>:

<blockquote>
 <b>Higher education institutions must orient themselves
 toward teaching students how to teach themselves, or risk
 becoming irrelevant</b>.  I'll add to the above that
 self-teaching (and self-regulation) are also valuable job
 skills.  During my time at Steelcase, I learned that what
 the company wanted was not so much a recent college graduate
 with straight A's, but <em>someone who could learn quickly
 and get up to speed without having to pull someone else off
 their job to teach them</em>.  So self-teaching is not only
 the ultimate goal of higher education and the main
 instantiation of lifelong learning, it's also what gives
 graduates a competitive advantage on the job market and sets
 them up not to be stuck in a loop for their careers.  I want
 my students to be able to say truthfully in an interview,
 when asked why they should be hired: <em>I know how to learn
 things, and learn fast, without a lot of hand-holding</em>.
 That is music to the employer's ears.  The word will get out
 about which colleges equip students well in this area.
 Similarly for those that don't.
</blockquote>

 Talbert has more to say about the value of students' being able
 to teach themselves.  One of our jobs as instructors is to
 provide the scaffolding that students need to learn how to do
 this effectively in our discipline, and then slowing dismantle
 the scaffold and let students take over.
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