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[Phys-L] Re: Charts or Graphs, and other Excel stuff



At 21:12 -0700 10/5/05, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

Ideally students would do manual graphing in middle school, so when they
graduate to computers they would know what their graphs should look like.

The only problem with that is that most middle school teachers are
clueless when it comes to making a useful graphs. I have watched MS
teachers explain how to draw a graph to a class in ways that would
curl your hair, even if you were bald. And all too often, the
experiments they are told to carry out are so crudely designed that
the results can hardly be put on a graph in any sensible way, or they
can be used to support just about any conclusion you want to put
forward. Sometimes what they are told to graph doesn't even make
sense.

The end result is that the students arrive on the HS doorstep with so
many misconceptions about graphs that it takes a teacher almost an
entire year to clean their minds of the garbage that was put there
before.

I am convinced that much of the problem with science teaching in this
country begins in elementary schools, where students are often taught
by science/math phobic teachers who fill the students' heads with
wrong stuff, both factually and methodologically. When the kids
arrive at HS, their heads are so screwed up that they are lucky if
the teacher can clean the slate enough so that by the time the
college teachers get to them, at least they won't have to unlearn
them of all the garbage they received in elementary school. At least
that means that the college teacher is starting fresh and can build
something worthwhile, but they are starting from scratch far too
often.

And that will be true only if the HS teachers are aware of what they
face and know how to deal with it. Most don't. It's not a pretty
sight.

I don't for a minute intend to imply that any of the teachers are not
dedicated and concerned with what their kids learn. The problem is
that they have been poorly prepared, are being asked to teach things
that they don't understand themselves, and are overwhelmed with class
size, extraneous requirements, rules that change faster than anyone
can learn them, discipline problems that they get no help with,
parents who think their child is a budding Einstein and can do no
wrong, and an administration that gives them only minimal support, if
any. What is amazing is that, given the situation most teachers find
themselves in, the schools aren't ten times worse than they are.


We have a whole lot of work to do to fix this situation. And it ain't
gonna be cheap. And it ain't gonna happen just because some
politician in Washington gets a law enacted the says basically, "Do
you know the way you are? Don't be that way! Oh, and we aren't gonna
pay for what we are requiring you to do, but if you don't do it right
we'll cut your school's funding or fire you. Have a nice day."

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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