Re: "quantization"

[Hugh Logan <hlogan@ix.netcom.com>]

Jerome Epstein wrote:
> 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.

I agree with you about Dr. Aron's stature in science education. In
fairness to Alan Cromer the statements concerning the errors in two
middle school texts were not connected with Dr. Arons. The SEED program 
is Dr. Cromer's own teacher enhancement project, which he evidently
thinks is superior to constructivist efforts. In _Connected Knowledge_
(1997) Cromer writes, "SEED begins with the basic concepts, or
underpinnings (Arons, 1990), that are the foundations of physical
science: length , mass, time, area, and volume (Cromer, Zahopoulous, a
Silevitch, 1994). From there it goes into force, density (the ratio of
mass to volume), pressure (the ratio of force to area), ... ." (p. 15
and repeated on p.185). From Cromer's description SEED is not a
textbook, but there is a _Sourcebook of Demonstrations, Activities, and
Experiments_ (Cromer and Zahapolous (1993). Cromer assumes the students
and their teachers are largely "concrete thinkers" and speaks of
"progress toward more abstract thinking" as a result of investigative
activities and the use of simple mathematical techniques." This sounds
something like the attempts to apply ideas based on Piaget's cognitive
psychology to facilitate the progression from the concrete operational
stage to the formal operational stage. I recall that Dr. Arons was
interested in this type of thing. Cromer only refers to Piaget twice in 
_Connected Knowledge_. On p.10, he states, "_Constructivism_ is a
postmodern antiscience philosophy that is based on Piaget's work on how
children construct concepts and conceptual relations and on ... Vico and
.... Berkeley... ." Cromer discussed Skinner's behaviorism "that was
modeled on positivism in the natural science. It avoided inventing terms
for invisible mental processes, focusing on the visible factors that
affected visible behavior." Cromer admits the failure of teaching
machines based on behaviorism. By contrast, "following the pioneering
work of Jean Piaget, psychology switched from doing controlled
experiments on isolated aspects of behavior, to studying full-blown
cognitive functioning ... ." "These were interesting findings, perhaps,
but difficult to interpret. Theoretical models were developed in
education, and in many other branches of psychology and social
psychology, that no longer adhered to strict positivistic principles. 
It became acceptable to developed (sic) an arcane vocabulary for what
goes on inside the human mind, totally disconnected from observable
phenomena. Metaphysics returned to the social sciences ... ." Thus
Piaget is dimissed. It seemed rather inconsistent for Cromer to use
Arons' approach as a foundation for his SEED program, knowing that 
Arons used Piaget's ideas. At the time I wrote my previous message, I
only had access to _Connected Knowledge_ (1997). The earlier book that
Mark Shapiro referred to, _Uncommon Sense, the Heretical Nature of
Science_ (1993) had been packed away during some construction at my
house, but I found it after looking for an hour or two. I haven't read
much of the earlier book, but Piaget's work seems to be presented in
Chapter 2 without being subjected to the scrutiny of positivism. In 
fact the word "positivism" does not appear in the index. On page 188 of
_Uncommon Sense_, he refers to the well-known paper of Arons and Karplus
(1976) showing that "more than half of adult Americans never reach the
stage of formal operations." On p. 194 Cromer describes his _SEED_
program in slightly different words: "Following Piagetian principles,
the course starts with the simplest concepts and builds up in 
complexity through a sequence of concrete activities. ... Progress
toward formal operational thinking is promoted through inquiry-based
activities and the use of simple mathematical techniques (ratios,
averages, graphs) to analyze quantitative data. ..." I don't see
anything here that is offensive or contradictory to Arons' teaching.
It appears that Cromer became more strongly committed to logical
positivism in the years separating the two books. Piaget is only
mentioned in unfavorable terms in the later book -- perhaps to
strengthen his opposition to constructivism. However, this seems to
leave his _SEED_ progam in a rather incongruous position, having been
developed along Piagetian lines.

Hugh Logan