Bartosz about Chapel

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Walter Bright" <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:j9jqkb$1sm$1 at digitalmars.com...
> On 11/11/2011 4:37 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> In my school experience (both high school and college), the students who
>> were well versed in and heavily focused on rote regurgitation were
>> consistently the ones with the best grades, and the ones who where 
>> therefore
>> considered to be "smart" even though they couldn't have reasoned to save
>> their lives. That *needs* to change.
>
> That was true of my high school, but not my college (Caltech). At Caltech, 
> rote memorization would get you precisely nowhere. Exams were (by 
> institute policy) open book and open note. This did have the interesting 
> effect of forcing the profs to come up with exams that could not be 
> completed by rote.
>
>.....
>
> (For another example, professors were not allowed to take attendance at 
> lectures, not allowed to make attendance part of the grade, not allowed to 
> proctor exams (100% honor system), etc. I loved being treated like an 
> adult for the first time.)
>

Wow. I'm genuinely impressed. A college that seems to actually have 
intelligent management. I had become convinced such a thing just simply 
didn't exist (I'm still fairly certain it doesn't exist in Ohio...Hell, I 
refuse to accept the notion that OSU is even a school at all - Football 
franchise (with a drooling, slobbering rabid following)? Yes, definitely. 
Commercial-zoned real-estate developer? Yes, oddly enough. School? 
Absolutely not).

Just to comment on one little aspect of what you said: At all the colleges I 
went to (three of them: A large public party school (BGSU), a small 
highy-regarded private school (John Carroll U), and a community college 
(Lakeland CC) that the locals seem to really like but had major power 
struggles and ego trips (talk about storm in a teacup)), at all of those, 
anytime there was an shool-wide institutionalized rule (which was rare in 
the case of the profs: they were mostly allowed to run amok), it was 
inevitably something idiotic, such as (at LCC and I think JCU IIRC) all 
classes being required to have an official book that the students must 
purchase (typically from the school's own bookstore, naturally). Or (at 
BGSU) first and second year non-local students being required to live 
on-campus *even* when there aren't enough dorms available (heaven forbid 
they should just simply *not* overbook enrollment). They were all total 
revolving-door scams.