Re: Syllabus for AP physics

[Hugh Haskell <haskell@ODIE.NCSSM.EDU>]

Good point, Jack. I didn't mean to commend or condemn math teaching in
general, only that they and other disciplines have achieved some sort of
continuity in their progression that we in science have not been able to
achieve. Thus we simply repeat everything over and over again, just as if
the students had never seen it before, which, of course, is the case for
many of them at each level. This does allow for students to enter the chain
at several points, but if we had some sort of progression starting earlier
in the educational process, it would not be necessary to allow for this
situation.

Hugh

>        Two comments on Hugh Haskell's eloquent plea:
> 1.  Please don't use the teaching of math as an example of how physics
> should be
> taught.  US math teachers have not yet discovered that math was invented
> to enable
> people to solve problems.  I have elsewhere plugged the Calculus text that
> David
> Tartakoff and I are writing to try to start a new direction in math teaching.
> 2.  I have made some unsuccessful attempts to persuade MIT to provide some
> feedback to high schools by identifying schools whose students enter MIT
> well prepared (or some such).  I'd be happy to coordinate further attempts
> along
> this line.  I've also been hoping to find time for a letter to my alumni
> magazine, Technology Review.  Let me hear from anyone else  interested.
>                                        Regards,
>                                                Jack
>
>        "I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
> to wit, how the milk gets into the cow.  Both of us
> had marveled over that mystery a long time.  We had
> followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
> daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
> that color."
>                Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
>                Autobiography

***************************************************
Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@odie.ncssm.edu>

"The box said 'requires Windows 95 or better,' so I bought a Macintosh."
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