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Re: [Phys-l] Student engagement



But wait --- I want to be clear: are we denying the existence of "aptitude"? I teach (or have taught) each of the three levels of 1st year physics my school offers. I see an amazingly wide spectrum of -- I want to say aptitude here -- so that it astonished me that anyone who has teaching experience would deny the existence of this trait. When I compare those who I would say have the least of this trait to those who have the most, I see a vast gulf between them, one that could never be bridged by properly designed interventions of any kind. As we plan our teaching strategies and policies, to ignore this gulf seems to me to be a combination of denial and hubris.

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Clement
Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2009 11:52 PM
To: 'Forum for Physics Educators'
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Student engagement


What evidence is there that we are born with aptitudes? Could Einstein not
have been a good lawyer, mechanic, or accountant? I understand that there
are talents like singing and playing a musical instrument. Sure there are
preferences. But are there really people who CANNOT learn science (i.e.
have no aptitude for it)? I'd love to see some research on that.

I agree that overeducation would be a waste . . . I just think that there's
no such thing as overeducation.
-------------------------------------------------------
This is a good question. Some things like dyslexia and ADD run in families
so aptitudes may also be partially genetically determined. But it is
abundantly clear that thinking skills can be taught or rather developed by
suitable interventions. Such intervention does not resemble traditional
education, but it works quite well as demonstrated by Feuerstein, and
Shayer&Adey. But of course there are the twin studies which show that twins
raised apart tend to be more similar than twins raised together.

Obviously exposure to ideas in the family setting creates aptitudes and
abilities without any explicit training by the parents. Musical geniuses
apparently can develop that way. Children of scientists would seem to tend
to specialize in science.

Piaget through his studies found that the level of thinking was culturally
dependent and varied from one society to another. Children of Berkeley
parents score higher on the Piagetian scale than children in other areas of
the country. Then of course there is the Flynn effect where the raw IQ
scores are rising every decade and the final cooked score has to be
periodically renormalized. The Flynn effect is the greatest in the
Netherlands which is a tight little extremely liberal country.

We do not know exactly why some students have developed proportional
reasoning, but it is quite clear that the usual school methods of teaching
it do not. Only about 25% of graduating HS seniors exhibit proportional
reasoning.

I would agree that there is not such thing as overeducation. But there is
such a thing as only learning one specialized field without having "uncommon
sense" in other fields. I am convinced we currently have undereducation for
the type of society and world we live in.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

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