Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Weight





On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Michael N. Monce wrote:

You are right, of course. The lack of total preparation has many
sources. The unprepared 18 year old of today compared to the fifties is a
result of not only education preparation, but also home and society
environment. I certainly did not mean to dump on education only; sorry.


We can't ignore the expansion of higher education in the last 30 years.
In the 50s and 60s, when I was in school, fewer people went on to college
and physics was an elitist specialty and was selected primarily by people
who were prepared for it, although the majority still dropped out before
graduation. Now higher education has become a necessity, and a broader
spectrum of people pursue it and some of them chose physics. Now, of
course, many of them are not cut out for physics, but many are capable of
doing physics, but arrive with less preparation than in the past, and,
oftem without types of experiences that most professional physicists that
I know have had - for example, the experience of trying to figure out how
things work (like taking apart clocks to see how they work). I think that
kind of experimentation is often discouraged.
Such students are, often, capable of learning physics, but they first have
to develop the skills and ways of thinking that we assume in the standard
curriculum. It is becoming ever more important that people understand
about physics and science in general. We can either ignore the changes in
our clientel and fail to do our job, or we can search for new approachs
that are accessible to a wide range of people, both in courses for
non-majors and majors. There a number of groups attempting this, and I
know, from experience, that it is an achievable goal.
We would be wrong to blame the elementary and secondary schools, they are
stuggling with similar problems, often compounded by a lack of adequate
background in science. We will do much better to partner with them to
seek solutions to our common problems. The best way to impress the value
of science on parents is to reach them when they are still students.

Al