> A teacher facing a classroom of 20 - 30 students will teach something, and there will be 20 - 30 mental responses to what is taught. Some will remember it easily, some will need to refer to their notes, but with enough repetition they will remember it, some will do the same amount of follow-up study and still not remember it correctly, others will write down their notes incorrectly because they were only paying partial attention, and the rest won't bother taking notes or remembering or caring at all.
In my physiology course in medical school, I was surprised to find I only had 3-4 pages of notes by the end. It was my best grade in that year of medical school -- I just *remembered* everything. I found it fascinating, and didn't want to distract myself by scribbling down notes.
> One teacher with varying levels of successful learning from the classroom full of students -- whose fault is it for those who fail to learn the material?
> The teacher is just a messenger -- whether the message is retained lies entirely with those who are receiving the message.
My wife (at 69 no longer teaching for a living) and I formulated a description of polar opposites in teaching methods -- the "populist" and the "elitist" (we thought of them as "Berkeley" and "Harvard").
In the populist method, the teacher is saying, "Here is my subject. It is really fascinating, interesting, wonderful. Look at how all these diverse factors work together! If you're not seeing the wonder here, I must not be teaching it properly."
The elitist teacher is saying, "Here is my subject. I'm teaching it wonderfully. If you don't see that, if you aren't learning it, there's something wrong with *you*."___
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