Ideocosmology

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

Igal suggests:

> 	In fact, the "recognition" made by the students very often presents
> THE problem in learning physics as the teacher has to bridge with the
> original intuitive knowledge of the learner, which is fun, good,
> beneficial, enjoyable, but, at the same time, highly untrivial to do and is
> very often unsuccessful for many reasons.  I would say that our life would
> be much easier if our mission were to facilitate students' construction of
> knowledge, instead of its re-construction.  This is the reality, especially
> with regard to introductory courses, especially in modern time.

I recognize what Igal is getting at here, but in my opinion this is
not a good approach to the ideal pedagogy.

My students come to me at age 17 or 18 and need to be taught to
understand their own universes by underpinning years of observations
with elegant theories that describe a universe much like the one they
have observed. The last thing I want to do is to start over from
scratch. I would much rather spend time reconstructing the small
parts of their knowledge that needs it than to start from scratch. If
I have a desire along those lines it is that my students should have
much, much more real world experience than they typically come to me
with. Rather than facilitating their construction of knowledge, I'm
going to tell them what they know that isn't right and tell them what
is right that they wouldn't "construct" on their own in a thousand
years without getting it from an authority. I'm also going to
reinforce every interaction they've had with their universes if I
have anything at all physical to contribute. They should go away
understanding the rainbow, for example, and many more things.

I don't believe modern time is any different in this respect from
ancient time or my childhood. Teaching and learning is a fundamental
human function which, in my opinion, is done no better in modern
time with "innovative" techniques than it was done in centuries past.

(Same thing goes for "partnering" and "parenting", by the way. I've
never read a sex manual or a book on raising children. Individual
members of my species who are completely illiterate have succeeded
in both activities for millenia without doing reading such books.
Instincts help a lot, just as they do in teaching and learning.)

Leigh