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Re: Physics First, Last, Always




My experience in the classroom with eighth graders,
indicate that most students can become functional with the use of simple
algebraic procedures that are proportionally based. I have also seen
that many kids at this age are not interested in school, let alone
science. Furthermore, many of these kids are getting a negative message
about school from all points outside the classroom and become victims of
the peer condition. This does not have to be the case and the force to
change these attitudes must come from the classroom where, hopefully, the
most influential adult (a teacher) in these kids lives can turn the
tide. It is true that our system generates some very creative thinkers
as a consequence of its open style but I think so many potentially great
thinkers are either lost entirely or do not come of age until much
later. Consequently, they must learn many skills that could have been
honed earlier in their development.

I think that the trend toward not holding students accountable for their
work and even their attendance on a daily basis is many teachers way of
giving in and accepting the malaise or buckling under the pressure.
Grade inflation is a harsh reality in most schools as a result. This is
happening on the college campuses as well.

It is becoming a trend that most of our current science is being
conducted by foreign students who are sent by their governments in order
to learn from the Yanks. What are the implications of this?


On Wed, 19 Jun 1996, nguilber wrote:

What are parental and community
attitudes toward their kids' education? (An article published a few years ago -
which I don't have at hand - suggested strongly that most American parents
suffered from the 'Lake Wobegon effect' - i.e., they believed that their kids
and their schools really were pretty much above average in spite of hard
evidence to the contrary, and hey, if it ain't broke, why fix it? or why get
involved to improve it if it's already good? American parents were also far
more likely than their Asian counterparts to believe that success comes from
innate ability rather than from hard work - and the results speak for
themselves, in my estimation.) Is education valued in the cultural 'soil'?
(My Thai students, for example, come here with a pretty good handle on basic
physics, even though they learn under methods many of us would find philistine -
rote memory, no lab work, etc. - but I get the feeling that education is valued
much more highly in Thai culture than it is here, so the kids there end up
learning well.) And, incidentally, my impression of the European model is that
it is less like the 'integrated science' schemes kicked around on phys-l than
it is like taking ten half-credit courses (instead of five full-credit ones)
during one's high-school career - but that opinion may be based on too small a
sample.

Nick

Nick Guilbert
Peddie School
Hightstown, NJ

nguilber@peddie.k12.nj.us


----------
Tom K. McCarthy Email:mcca6300@spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov