Re: Ideocosmology

[Igal Galili <igal@vms.huji.ac.il>]

Leigh,
I think, I understood what you said.  In some points I agree, in some not.
It probably not the place to go into a deep analysis.

	Your program of physics education is clear and you apply it for
many years, during which you continue to accumulate and develop your own
knowledge in the subject matter and that about  students' possible
confusion.  The success of its application may be known to you, but
probably not in full extent, in modern understanding of the "resultant
knowledge" concept.   Despite the on-face clearness and plausibility of the
principles you claimed, much evidence have been accumulated about the
failure of this program at high school - college levels (e.g., FCI -story
with its endless replications in various schools, including Harvard).
Moreover, statistically, this program usually fails, especially in cases of
less experienced, skilled or educated instructors (who are the majority).

> .... 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.

	In my view, they understand this point themselves without any help.
Their problem is that in their learning they, in many cases, have nothing
else to apply but their initiate knowledge of "whatness" and especially of
"howness".  Kasparov plays chess on about 40 fields simultaneously and may
loose in 1-2 games in a performance, this is considered a high success
(Sharansky won him in such a show).  I dare to guess that you have less
success (drawing only on numbers and ratio).

> I'm also going to
> reinforce every interaction they've had with their universes if I
> have anything at all physical to contribute.

	Nobody questions this valuable point.

> 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.

Well, I am probably not a right person to provide you with all information
that has been accumulated in the history of education which is a separate
discipline.
I permit myself to mention only few points (so much have written on this all):

1. In the past, you have mentioned, education in general, and physics
education, in particular, were highly elective (physics education is still
highly elective in most countries, including mine).   The numbers of our
days and those from the past are out of comparison (in layman terminology).

2. In the past, you have mentioned, teaching authority usually did not care
about success in the learning process, it was normally the problem of the
learner himself.  A completely different style and strategy of learning
were practised, not speaking about a completely different social context
and manners of behavior in physics class.

3. In the past, you have mentioned, there were no assessment tools, which
would check the quality of knowledge of graduators in our modern
understanding of the word quality.  No data are available neither about
those who succeeded, no those who failed at those times.  We do know that
the norm was memorization only.

4. Even if we assume that the amount of materials to learn is the same
(which is clearly not the case) the spread of physics knowledge and its
technical and conceptual sophistication is much higher on nowadays, that it
was in the 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.)

I have nothing to say here (I do not know this stuff but intuitively),
besides, may be, try to make a symmetrical statement regarding physics.

Igal.