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Re: physics before math????



On Fri, 21 Jan 2000 15:12:46 -0500 Michael Edmiston
<edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU> writes:

* * * Opinion strongly stated here. * * *

If your high school is pushing for physics in the first year of high
school, watch out. What are the motives? I think there is strong
motive
among the biologists and some chemists to attempt a switch with the
physicists.
In the schools I have examined that are pushing for this, I see
essentially no scientific logic
behind their push. It seems totally based upon selfish motives.

Mike

It appears as if you have not checked with the many schools where the
Biology teachers
are very happy to be working have teaching jobs. In the typical high
school the Biology teachers outnumber the Physics teachers by 10 to 1.
In fact very few high schools have more than one
physics teacher. He usually has to switch to teach chemistry every other
year because
so few students elect to take physics in their junior or senior years.

If high schools were to offer physics instead of biology as a "required "
science during the freshman or sophomore years, almost all of the bio
teachers would have to be fired because of the lack of students. I doubt
that it would make them very happy. There would be very few
teaching jobs for the thousands of pre-med students who decide not to
attend medical schools.

And where would we get a sufficient number of qualified physics teachers
to fill all the jobs that
would be opening up??? At the present time there aren't enough to
available physics teachers to
fill the positions that open each year.

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where there are plenty of med school drop-outs available to teach high
school biology
but physics teachers are scarcer than Loch Ness monsters)



or sophomore years
.