How can I ask a teacher to follow the textbook more closely?

Question

This term I'm taking a (graduate) course which is crucial for my degree. The teacher's plan for the course is quite ambitious and all along he's been following the structure of a given text, but he doesn't follow it completely and quite often omits (what I consider) key results from it, e.g. results which motivate or deepen the understanding of definitions or other results. To put it bluntly, he leaves a lot of gaps that the book covers nicely.

It's been a frustrating process and we're soon going to start with a very important topic and I've been wondering how to approach him about this. My idea at the moment is to ask him to follow the textbook more closely, even if by doing so we sacrifice how much we cover, but I'm looking for suggestions.

Final edit (concluding remarks): I've chosen the answer which I think gave me the best course of action and I think summarizes some of the most important points in comments and other answers. Anyone reading this thread in the future should definitely check all of them anyway. They all provided valuable feedback for me.

I'd also like to point out that Shane's comments in chat are spot on. I believe said comments capture the exterior root of my problems, which I was unable to see at the time when the question was written. On my end I also learned a couple of important things on how to deal with these kind of situations.

Answer 1

David K.'s suggestion that it's up to the professor and you are responsible for any additional study that is required is essentially correct; however, I do not think his approach of asking politely and expecting a "no" is all there is to it. I would suggest a different approach. (Also, I would not follow Dan R.'s advice.)

Rather than assume that you know how the course should best be taught, figure out why the professor does it the way he does. See your professor in office hours and say that, because you may yourself have to teach this material in the future (doesn't matter if teaching is actually in your plans), you would like to know more about his approach to the material. At that point, you can say something like, "I noticed, for instance, that you didn't cover some cases and skipped some sections. How do you make those choices?" That's still a rather broad question, so be prepared to give examples of specific things that the prof. skipped that you thought would have been interesting to cover. Do not tell him that he should have covered them. Simply ask how he made the choice to skip those particular ones and not others.

This way, you'll come across as an interested and motivated student, not an overconfident, whiney type. Good luck.

Answer 2

You may certainly ask -- politely! -- but you should expect to be told "no", and you should accept that answer if it is given. In most graduate courses, it is the privilege of the instructor to decide what are the important points and how to organize them.

If the course is preparation for a qualifying exam (for instance), then there may be a more rigid syllabus that needs to be adhered to. In such a case, if the instructor were deviating strongly from the expected objectives it would make sense to complain.

As an aside: since the book presents things so well (from your perspective), you can learn the material from it and consider the lectures as supplementary. It then seems to me that having lectures that approach things from a different perspective than that of the text is a benefit. An instructor who parrots the text would be redundant.

Answer 3

Wow. I deliberately "leave a lot of gaps that the book covers nicely" in advanced courses. I say "this is in the book." And I actually aim to leave them especially in the parts that the book does best.

Now, I always ask for any questions from the class, about anything I say, whether it is in the book or not. But I do believe advanced students should get what is in the book from the book unless they have specific questions they want to raise in class.

So, if your teacher does not even take questions about textbook material that he does expect you to learn, then that is your problem. Ask the teacher to take questions -- and of course ask it politely.

If the teacher does take questions, though, then rather than ask the teacher to better anticipate your questions maybe you should work on asking more questions yourself.

Answer 4

I'm seeing a general disdain for postdocs (who are simply more junior than the professors; one day, some of them will be the hotshots of your field), and I can't decide if your feeling superior comes from the actual bad teaching, or from your disdain. Are you sure that the postdoc is omitting important results? Are they important in your opinion, or did you get this information elsewhere? In any case, a bit of respect would go a long way, when you ask the "postdoc" to follow a single reference.

I am more concerned by your attitude than your professor's plans, however. It is quite common to not recite an entire book, and pick and choose the important topics from a text. This leaves room for your proactivity: if you want to learn the material in more depth, you can do so by reading the text, including the part the instructor has left out. That's really what grad school is for. You take control of your own studying.

That being said, most postdocs are very receptive to feedback, as they have not been teaching for very long, so if your comment is a valid one, and if you can do it without hurting his feelings, he should be open to your suggestions (however, don't say things like "you should sacrifice the material you intend to cover for clarity", as the power to decide on the syllabus rests entirely with the postdoc.)

Answer 5

How to ask a teacher to follow a single reference?

In the same way as you would ask him anything else: respectfully, and in a way that makes it clear that it is a request, that is, that you are aware that he can say no and accept his authority on the matter. For example, if you wanted to do it in an email, the following may be appropriate:

Dear [title/name]

My name is [your name] and I am a student in your class [name of class (useful to mention in case he is teaching more than one class)]. I wanted to give you some feedback about our class. I noticed that you sometimes skip results from the textbook that seem to me to be an important part of [topic] - for example, the other day you did this with [insert a recent example]. I'm not sure if you were expecting us to read those results on our own, and I'm prepared to do that if necessary, but my feeling is that this part of the theory may be important enough to justify covering in detail in class. I realize that would take more time, and I would hate to miss out on [some advanced subjects the teacher is trying to get to], but at the same time I feel like covering the material in such a way may have the effect of leaving me and the other students with somewhat shaky foundations, which would make it difficult for us to handle the more advanced material when we get to it.

If you feel my feedback is reasonable, would you perhaps consider covering the textbook material in a more uniform way and not leaving out important results like the one I mentioned? I feel that would be helpful, at least for me personally. Of course, I know that I don't have enough of a perspective on the subject to be able to tell for sure which results are the most important, so I completely understand if you think it's preferable to stick with the current approach. I also wanted to tell you that generally speaking I'm really enjoying the class - thanks!

[sincerely, regards, best wishes etc.]

Finally, I'd like to add that although I see nothing wrong with you making such a request (and for all I know it could be a very sensible and reasonable one), you should keep in mind that what I wrote in the second paragraph of the template email could very well be true: your teacher, although he may not be very experienced, still likely has a much better understanding of the subject of the class than you, and generally speaking is better equipped than you to judge which results are worth covering in detail in class. So be prepared for him to say no. At the same time, even very experienced teachers can still benefit from feedback, so I think this email can only lead to an improved quality of teaching, whether your specific request is granted or not.

Answer 6

Personally, I would expect the lectures and the text-book to complement each other rather than to duplicate each other. If the lecturer was merely reading from the text book I would feel cheated. It's good that there is material in the book that's not covered in the lectures, and vice-versa.

Answer 7

(Student here)

In my experience, books and lectures are meant to complement one another.

In some courses, lecture follows the book to a T. In others, the book is unrelated to the main idea of the lecture and is really just helpful material.

This being said, I don't want to take a course where the instructor just reads the book to me. This is kind of insulting -- I know how to read. I go to lecture to get information from a different angle or to get the main points.

If I don't understand a concept in lecture, I read the book and likewise, if I don't understand concepts from the book, I get more detail from the lecture or just ask the professor.

Since your course has a book, perhaps it should be assumed that it is required reading and should be used in conjunction with the lecture instead of following an approach where one or the other will suffice.

Answer 8

I would suggest you ask indirectly. The first thing I would is look at the skipped sections and decide if they are useful or not. For the ones you think are useful, try and learn the material on your own. When you get stuck, go talk to the instructor. At that point you can ask about the sections whose importance you are not sure about. By showing the instructor which sections are important to you and that you are not equipped to handle, you will be indirectly telling him where he should go in greater depth next time. The instructor may even be able to extrapolate to what he should do in the future.

Answer 9

First, my advice is to not ask him to change his teaching technique. I'll give you 8:5 that you will get nothing more than a dirty look and some form of "No. If you don't like the way I teach, then there's the door."

Some reasons that teachers will do this:
1. They want you in class! If they just teach from the book, then you don't really have to attend lecture, do you?
2. They have their course materials set up a certain way, and they don't want to invest the time into overhauling them.
3. They have tenure.
4. They don't really want to teach, they want to be working on their research. They will put minimal effort into teaching; enough to satisfy their job requirements.
5. They don't really know how to teach. There is a huge difference between being a good Mathematician, and a good Math Teacher. Example, a Ph.D. may have taken years of advanced mathematics, but not a single course in Education! They really don't have a grasp of pedagogy.

Some options for you are: 1. Switch sections, and take with a different teacher. I used to do this when I was in school. I would scout out all teachers for a specific class, and take with the one that I liked best. If you have the foresight, do this the semester before, so that you can audit a class and see them in action. 2. Perhaps you can defer this course next semester, if a different teacher is available. 3. If it's really that much of an issue, or even take an equivalent class with a different school and transfer the credits. 4. Knuckle under, and take the best from both sources of information. This is also a good reason to team up with others in class. Strength in numbers :)