Re: "quantization"

[Jerome Epstein <jerepst@worldnet.att.net>]

Hugh Logan wrote:
1
> >
>
> Constructivism in education is fairly new to me, having been brought to
> my attention by a teacher who had just read Alan Cromer's _Connected
> Knowledge, Science, Philosophy, and Education_. In particular he was
> appalled that lecture-demonstration tables had been removed from all
> the science classrooms in New Zealand in support of the nonobjectivity
> of constructivist educators. According to Cromer, "This is to prevent
> teachers from claiming to know more than their students, thus unduly
> influencing how the students' construct their own knowledge." (p. 11).
> Cromer states, "The positivists Auguste Compte and Ernst Mach were pure
> empiricists because of their profound distaste and fear of metaphysics,
> whereas many constructivists are pure empiricist because of their
> ignorance of the scientific process." (p. 20). Cromer leads one to
> believe that constructivist educators do not regard competence in one's
> subject matter to be a matter of very high priority, citing examples of
> consructivist inquiry lessons that did not go very well. 

As Hugh Logan has perceived: This view is a total perversion of what
constructivism is about. It is putting a label on something and then
condemning everything with that name, while it is the label that is
miaplaced.

Arons, in my opinion, is one of the truly great names in science
education of the past half century. And to tar him (or constructivism)
with some idiotic stuff in a bad middle-school text, is just not helpful
at all.