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[Phys-l] Another Acerbic Arnold Arons Anti-Advanced-Agenda Argument



If you reply to this long (8 kB) post please don't hit the reply button unless you prune the copy of this post that may appear in your reply down to a few relevant lines, otherwise the entire already archived post may be needlessly resent to subscribers.

Physoc's Art Hobson (2011, in his post "Re: PER Review Article? #2," wrote:

"PER is great so far as it goes, but physics educators also need to pay attention to scope and sequence. A good place to experiment with scope is in courses for non-scientists. These can be more flexible because they needn't satisfy specific pre-requisites. Yet such courses often plod along in the same pattern as standard professional courses. We need to try new topics. Physoc supports teaching all sorts of social topics. Another area is modern/contemporary physics. We're living in an ideal age for physics education, what with all the NEW IDEAS AND POSSIBILITIES IN COSMOLOGY, HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS, QUANTUM PHYSICS, etc. Yet our intro courses focus almost entirely on Newtonian mechanics and classical E&M."

My response to Art in a post "Cosmology, High Energy Physics, & Quantum Physics in Introductory Courses?" [Hake (2012)] netted zero (0) responses on Physhare, Phys-L, & PhysLrnR; and one (1) response on Physoc - that from Marc Sabb (2012), who correctly pointed out that most K-12 teachers no longer have the luxury of choosing what topics to teach since they are often mandated by state standards.

In that post I quoted anti-advanced-agenda arguments of Bruce Alberts (2012) and Arnold Arons (1997).

Here's ANOTHER ACERBIC ARNOLD ARONS ANTI-ADVANCED-AGENDA ARGUMENT quoted from "Toward wider public understanding of science" (Arons, 1973)] [bracketed by lines "AAAAA. . . ."]:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Students are being told about the "fascinating" particles of high energy physics, with jargon about interactions, angular momentum, mass-energy relations, quantum transitions, and the uncertainty principle, while they have yet achieved no conception of what is meant by velocity, acceleration, force, mass, energy, or electrical charge, much less of how we obtain evidence regarding the structure of matter on a scale that transcends our senses.

Students, who are still intrinsically Aristotelian and have no significant understanding of the law of inertia, are invited to toss around phraseology about the Coriolis effects in meteorology and oceanography.

Students who have no notion of how to define "local noon," midnight, or the north-south direction, who have no idea of the origin of the seasons or the phases of the moon (they believe the unilluminated part of the moon to be the earth's shadow), who are unaware the stars have a diurnal motion, are subjected to lectures on stellar nucleosynthesis, quasars, pulsars, and black holes in courses called "astronomy."

Students are conned into reading and talking about DNA, the molecular nature of genes, nerve and muscle action, while they have no idea why we believe in atoms and molecules; how we come to know anything about molecular formulas, size, or structure; what is meant by "oxygen," "nitrogen," "carbon"; what is meant by "electrical charge" or "potential difference" and how we know that these concepts have anything to do with nerve action.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
Links to Articles: <http://bit.ly/a6M5y0>
Links to SDI Labs: <http://bit.ly/9nGd3M>
Blog: <http://bit.ly/9yGsXh>
Academia: <http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake>


REFERENCES [All URL's accessed on 7 Feb 2011; most shortened by <http://bit.ly/>.]
Alberts, B. 2012. "Trivializing Science Education," Science 335 (6066): 263, 20 January, a summary is online s at <http://bit.ly/wu4O7l>.

Arons, A.B. 1973. "Toward wider public understanding of science," Am. J. Phys. 41(6): 769-782; online to subscribers at <http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v41/i6>. See also Arons (1974).

Arons, A.B. 1974. "Toward wider public understanding of science: Addendum," Am. J. Phys. 42(2): 157-158; online to subscribers at <http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v42/i2>.

Arons, A.B. 1997. "Teaching Introductory Physics," p. 362. Wiley, publisher's information at <http://bit.ly/jBcyBU>. Amazon.com information at <http://amzn.to/bBPfop>, note the searchable "Look Inside" feature.

Hake, R.R. 2012. "Cosmology, High Energy Physics, & Quantum Physics in Introductory Courses?" online on the OPEN!:-) Phys-L archives at <http://bit.ly/zG34L3>. Post of 3 Feb 2012 14:04:44-0800 to Physhare, Phys-L, PhysLrnR, and Physoc.

Hobson, A. 2011. "Re: PER Review Article? #2," online on the CLOSED! Physoc archives at <http://bit.ly/wuP5qp>. Post of 5 Dec 2011 09:09:36-0600 to Physoc. To access the archives of PHYSOC one needs to subscribe :-(, but that takes only a few minutes by clicking on <http://bit.ly/dVm2AM> and then clicking on "Join or leave the list (or change settings)." If you're busy, then subscribe using the "NOMAIL" option under "Miscellaneous." Then, as a subscriber, you may access the archives and/or post messages at any time, while receiving NO MAIL from the list!

Sabb, M. 2012. "Re: Cosmology, High Energy Physics, & Quantum Physics in Introductory Courses? on the CLOSED! Physoc archives at <http://bit.ly/w8HXZF>. Post of 4 Feb 2012 09:42:52 +0700 to Physoc. To access the archives of PHYSOC one needs to subscribe :-(, but that takes only a few minutes by clicking on <http://bit.ly/dVm2AM> and then clicking on "Join or leave the list (or change settings)." If you're busy, then subscribe using the "NOMAIL" option under "Miscellaneous." Then, as a subscriber, you may access the archives and/or post messages at any time, while receiving NO MAIL from the list!