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Re: [Phys-l] education and careers for Muggles




What is a good career path for the segment of the population
who will never be good at math and technology?


This assumes that there are a significant number of people who will never be
good at math and technology. Is that necessarily true? This often happens
when people do not have higher order scientific reasoning. But Arons in his
book cited an intervention on preservice elementary school teachers. They
tend to test on the concrete operational level. But at the end of the
intervention 85% tested at the formal operational. So they can be good at
math and technology.

Of course some can go into careers which involve the humanities. But
teaching the humanities also needs to be reformed so that students achive
higher level thinking. We do not have any tests for higher level thinking
in other areas than science and math. This is because Piaget was a
scientist and thought in terms of scientific/math tasks.

Muggles is a derogatory term for people outside the field of wizardry, so I
would not call non scientists muggles. The non scientists can also perform
wonderful feats of wizardry. Can you write a compelling novel, or compose a
superb pice of music, dance divinely, or paint a beautiful picture? If you
can do all these things, I salute you. But usually people can have more
than one talent but not all. Is being a scientist really superior to being
Mozart, or Michelangelo?

Isn't a good chef a person worth having? This mania that everyone has to go
to college is nonsense. We used to have vocational training in HS, but that
seems to have gone away. Incidentally as to technology every teenager knows
more features of their personal devices than most people our age do. Is
that really being bad with technology?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX