Re: Physics and the Paideia Process

[Herbert H Gottlieb <herbgottlieb@JUNO.COM>]

New innovations to teaching methods, such as the paideia method
are all doomed to fantastic success during the early days of
their development. We are sure to expect a proliferation of
articles in the educational journals and graduate student "research"
theses attesting to the hopes that the paideia method will do
for the education field what tea balls and instant coffee have
done for our afternoon tea socials.

If you check the histories of  every new claimed panacia that will
revolutionize education you will find that they all go through
a similar process of  spreading success like wild fire follwed by
an even more rapid collapse a few years later.

The only technique that most of the professional  "educators" agree
on is that " The lecture Method " of teaching does not work . Yet,
despite this so called truism, the lecture method continues because it is
very efficient fron an economic standpoint, and in the hands
of professional s who know how to use it, students learn.

Hopefully, the paideia method will prove to be an exception to the
panacias of the past. I just hope that I live long enough to see this
wish fulfilled.

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
((Who doubts the paideia method as well as his own doubting)


On Tue, 04 Feb 2003 21:03:17 -0500 Tony Wayne <wayne@PEN.K12.VA.US>
writes:
> I'm currently taking another how to educate class. One of my
> assignments is
> to conduct a paideia seminar IN PHYSICS. (If you curious as to what
> the
> paideai process is, you can find out more at
> http://www.paideia.org.)
> Eliminating metaphysics, does anyone teach a physics lesson
> involving the
> paideia method? If so what topic do you teach and what resources do
> you use
> to springboard the discussion?
> -Tony
> ==========================================================
> Tony Wayne                    Those that can, do.
> wayne@pen.k12.va.us           Those that understand, teach.