Tom has a new post on his Teaching Mathematics blog: Lagrange Multipliers – A Historical Approach? Tom riffs off of a (not uncommon) poor 1960’s undergraduate lecture he had, on the method of Lagrange multipliers. Please support Tom’s blog and check it out.
Thanks Marty
University lectures in the 60s did not need to be great. The audience were a keen, small proportion of the population. Many students who failed and were removed went to a Technical College where real teaching was done. When “rehabilitated” they could return to the university.
The lecturer in question was probably one of the better ones. But we are remembered for our worst lecture, not our best.
In my experience, their research did not have to be great either. I knew of one case where a lecturer was not promoted to senior lecturer because he had not published anything; he was advised to publish something; so in the next year he did publish a paper and bingo, in the following year he was promoted.
Luckily, today everyone is employed and promoted on merit.
If you have the correct definition of “merit”, then yes.