Molson Hart

My favorite college professor refused to answer questions. He’d always answer with “I don’t know. Did you try the manual/google/etc?” It drove some of my fellow students nuts — but he was teaching us to be self-sufficient learners.

My favorite professor taught Financial Intermediaries & Markets socratically. Called on students at random to answer assigned questions, and would rip us apart when wrong. Notorious for people crying / storming out, but it’s the only time I’ve ever read a textbook cover to cover.

I don’t know what he was training people for. That doesn’t sound like 99.9% of real life professional scenarios. What do you think?

Forces you to really understand the material because it wasn’t just answering the written questions but the probing he would add live. Because of the method you had to fully understand the material as you never knew what you’d get called on. Constantly on the edge of your seat.

There’s another language prof who developed the Rassias method for language instruction which involved “drill.” A senior or native speaker would lead a small group entirely in the language and constantly hop to different people keeping you constantly thinking of what to say.

Wonder if that had inspired him. It’s incredibly effective. Basically the opposite of the mindset you have in a lecture where occasionally they request volunteers to answer something and you can just coast through class.

So kind of the opposite of your prof. Not teaching you how to think, just really proving whether you absorbed the expected material for each class prior to showing up.