sborník

GEOMETRY BETWEEN PISA AND BOLOGNA
– Founding of “Centres for Innovation and/or Competence”: According to
the opinion of University leaderships standard teaching and education of
undergraduates is no longer held in great esteem. What counts is
working within “graduate colleges” and “special research programs”,
Fraunhofer- or Max-Planck-Institutes, where we can harvest the
educational fruits of undergraduate teaching from far abroad. But
finally: Who cares about our own undergraduates
– Outsourcing of teaching capacity: A cheap solution is to let retired
persons give courses at the basis of honorary contracts. This seems to be
common use not only in Germany but also in Eastern European
countries. Even these persons might have been ‘scientifically strong’
and are routines in teaching, they are more or less isolated. They are
excluded from University benefits as they cannot get travelling money
and conference fees. Their contracts yield one semester, what is not very
motivating to keep courses up to date. But it is a cheap solution, with
negative consequences after a decade, maybe not at once.
3 How do mathematicians cope with the new
teaching/research structures
Because of lack of teaching staff in Mathematics courses for different types
of studies have to be merged. Here one can mention the catchword “One
Mathematics for everybody”, which should justify such a pedagogically
wrong fusion of courses with different purposes. The catchword is quite
common opinion among mathematicians! But there are several misunderstandings,
at least from the Geometry point of view, as it is subsumed that
– Geometry – as far it is part of Mathematics – and Mathematics are based
on equal methods of thinking, and that therefore
− teaching Mathematics/Geometry primary has to impart mathematical
thinking, argumentation and methods to students independently of their
study and needs, and that the
− transfer to applications and treating specific ‘real’ problems arising from
diverse engineering professions comes secondary.
From personal teaching experience I learned that “pure” Mathematics or
Geometry is not the biggest hurdle; it is the ‘mathematisation’ of problems
posed by ‘real life’, what causes the greatest difficulties. But exactly, with
problem oriented learning/teaching (POL), students become best motivated
for acquisition of mathematical tools. Of course, POL demands some
knowledge of the respective engineering study by the teacher. Here most
Mathematics teachers have week points. There is much ignorance about
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