Salient. Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 41 No. 3. March 13 1978

[Introduction]

Poster for Transcendental Meditation Technique

Over the years the pages of this magazine have been used as a vehicle for criticising many of the departments of this university. Those in the science faculty however seem to have remained immune from these attacks, indicating that either the departments in this faculty have reached a level of perfection yet to be realised in the arts faculty, or, as seems more likely, that the critical faculties of science students have long since atrophied, allowing many departments to retain teaching and assessment procedures long outmoded.

Here the Mathematics department will be briefly examined. It is not the worst offender in the matter of poor teaching methods, for over recent years the department has not only been involved in course-evaluation, but the appearance of the Keller plan based courses indicates a more positive response to these evaluations than is usually found in this faculty. Therefore it is particularly important to stimulate some student discussion of the department's teaching programme as, with typical apathy, students have been far behind staff in both ideas and criticisms, and it is crucial that they raise themselves from their textbooks and become more actively involved with the changes around them.