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Re: College nowadays - What "should" students know?



I've been lurking, because I've been busy, and meaning to write later.
But you have said it for me. My only concern if for the physics
teachers who are not on this list, and may be in the same place as your
students.

cheers

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Ed Schweber wrote:

Ed Schweber (edschweb@ix.netcom.com)
Physics Teacher at The Solomon Schechter Day School, West Orange, NJ
To obtain free resources for creative physics teachers visit:
http://www.physicsweb.com

Hi:
I have become increasingly troubled that "good" high school physics
classes are increasingly becomming mirrors of college classes. Only if we
high school teachers run through Serway and Faughn, Giancoli, Cutnell and
Johnson, etc are we deemed to be doing our jobs. And if we can get through
Resnick and Halliday in one year on our students first exposure to physics
we are truly excellent.

Yet as we increasingly teach this way Sadler (??) at Harvard reports
that high school physics has very little impact on performance in college
physics and Eric Mazur at Harvard writes in Peer Instruction that even
science and engineering students in his introductory physics sequence had
deep gaps in their comprehension of conceptual understanding which they hid
behind an agile mastery of mechanical solution algorithms.

On the other hand Larry Cartwright raises a valid point. Too much of what
high school science has at times offered as a counterpoint is meaningless
drivel. What then?

Perhaps we high school teachers should spend more time (at least in a
first year class) addressing the basic concepts and leave Gauss's Law and
thermodynamic circles for college.

I find that I don't have to get very far below the top tier of students
in my top classes before I find a significant number who have significant
problems relating velocity to position graphs. And when pushed, even my best
students initially (and unfortunately even finally) persistently confuse
equilibrant forces with action/reaction forces. It seems better to me to
adress these issues in high school than to worry about Kirchoff's laws.

Ed Schweber