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Re: [Phys-l] Inquiry



Is that where our beginning students are?


If you follow this back a bit, I wasn't really referring to beginning students.

I categorically reject the notion that a modern education should absolve students of the responsibility to read and learn – by any means – outside of the classroom. On their own, without the handholding the usual mechanisms of a well-crafted course provide. We abdicate our responsibility to educate if we do not teach students to learn how to learn – by themselves. In many ways that is our PRIMARY responsibility. And there is far more to learn in this world that MUST be learned by oneself, usually from books, than there is that can be learned from lengthy classes with skilled teachers with carefully crafted, pre-digested exercises that guide them to discover what we want them to discover. As students become professionals, those crutches are gone. Sure, we often teach ourselves by something that resembles inquiry. But we teach ourselves with a whole lot of sit- your-fanny-down-and-figure-it-out as well. They are BOTH deeply important skills – I don't care what your line of work is.

How responsible are we being if we send students off the medical school, law school, graduate school in physics or engineering or whatever, if all they have ever seen are inquiry-based courses? (Perhaps it is worth the reminder that medical school and graduate school generally offer a balance of modes of learning – sending students off to work in offices/hospitals/labs etc. while at the same time doing serious book-work.)

Need I repeat that I am generally in SUPPORT of PER-based reform in introductory education. This need not – and SHOULD not – be an either/or choice. Somehow these discussions seem doomed to pit what I regard as simultaneously necessary skills against one another.

David Craig


<http://web.lemoyne.edu/~craigda/>