If students today have such difficulty reading, shouldn't our efforts be
directed at improving this important life skill rather than something
like physics which they probably won't use more than a couple of times
throughout their life?
I am not being flip here. My grammar school education was in a small 4
room Catholic parochial school. Throughout the entire 8 years we never
had a lesson on science of any kind - never mind physics. But we did get
mind numbing hours of drill in reading, diagramming sentences,
arithmetic, elementary algebra, music, and (of course) Catechism. Some
of us ,like me, went on to public high school. Science and math there
came incredibly easy for us. Our group ran the science club, the ham
radio club, and two of us were Westinghouse Science Talent search state
winners. Our advantage was our strong reading and math skills. We
learned science - we weren't taught it.
Bob at PC
-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
[mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony
Lapinski
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 4:24 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Students' READING abilities
Interesting and important thread!
Reading in class is a good idea, but it takes MUCH (too much?) time.
Many
students are distracted/impatient these days, making it even more
difficult for them to learn physics. Still, they should ultimately be
responsible for their learning. Straight lecturing simply does not work.