Schrodinger's Solipsistic Student

Concerts tend to bring out the best in musical performers. For some reason uncomprehendible to the most of us, there is sense of connection that you can feel at a really charged up concert. We barely get a glimpse of it and never truely last in that euphoric moment forever.

In a classroom, we're neither looking for a concert like experience, nor are we want a Seinfeld-esque personality.

When I walk into that class room, what I'm secretly hoping for is somebody who can engages the intellect of the class, making them feel good they're alive. Yet there have been several an occasion, you are made to feel like yet another formless boring data dump by someone who not only hasn’t figured out how to connect with the class, he hasn’t even realized he needs to.

Students have accepted the fact of the matter that most of their teachers simply launch into their own work as if

• they have read and thoroughly assimilated all previous work in the field;

• they can absorb, in real time, all of the material about to be verbally inflicted on them; and

• they can accurately extract all the important conclusions from this spiel with little or no help from the teacher.

It takes quite a bit of effort to stay awake at the best of times to figure out the context, if not surmise that deep down within somewhere hidden away is a logical flow of ideas.

The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled was convincing the world that PowerPoint was not Evil. "Bullet Oriented" visual aids establish a military relationship between the student and the instructor. Powerpoint has this way of efficiently bulldozing subtlety replacing it with ambiguous phrases and lowering the student's IQ by 20 points.

Very soon one finds the presentation has taken on a rather gonzo element. Moderately promising data morphs itself into chartjunk poking it's finger into the eye of thought.

Well how did these visual aids that were supposed to get the main points across maintaining a logical flow of ideas come to the point of driving students up the wall. Powerpoint allows speakers to pretend that they are giving a real talk, and audiences to pretend that they are really listening.

When the time comes to open your text books to page N, and it's kind of like story time but when the contents of the book are read aloud to the entire class, and you get this eerie feeling you know less about the subject that when he started reading trust me it's bad.

This is when it comes to mind, hey if JFK had powerpoint would he have been a better speaker. Would "I have a dream" sounded any better if we saw it with some animation....

Is it too much to walk into a lecture hall and find someone who's

• Kind without being a pushover

• Knowledgeable without being condescending

• Clearly expressive without being boring