Playful sparring with Dewey

["Rauber, Joel Phys" <RAUBERJ@mg.sdstate.edu>]

Richard Tarara actually as already given my main response; but I can't 
resist opening my mouth a little more (something my parents told me not to 
do, but it was a lesson that never sank in; sometimes to my regret).

> Well, as one whose experience is now all too close to 30 years, I have to
> point out that having degrees and applying for positions, etc. has little
> to do with the measures referred to in the quoted passage.  We recently had
> a search which yielded about 350 applicants, but these applicants are from
> a pool that consists of less than 1% of all the people who have ever had
> physics instruction in their lives.

But, those applicants apparently succeeded (in general), despite having been 
victimized by traditional instruction for the most part.

> The reason that we see so many applicants per position is not that the
> world is swamped by the successes of our instruction, but that there are so
> few positions available (and we have fax and word processing to support the
> enterprise of making applications.)  A case *might* even be made that there
> are so few positions available is another possible measure attributable to
> a kind of failure of the educational responsibilities of our profession.

I'd say that we are being swamped by successes, as least as measured by our 
society's willingness to hire the product of that process.  Our state 
legislature is not hiring more products because of "failure of the 
educational responsibilities of our profession." , but rather because it 
sees no need to do so.

> It strikes me that when we do consider the numbers (I generated a
> calculation last year of relative numbers of student-instruction-hours in
> physics, teachers and students at all levels, elementary, middle/jr, high
> school, college non-majors, college and graduate majors.), suggesting that
> those who become physics majors might have done much of what they have
> accomplished in spite of us in intro classes (HS & College) is hard to
> dismiss on numbers alone.  Less than 1% of all people who receive physics
> instruction become physicists.

Repeat of Richard Tarara's response.

> The one thing learned by 99+% of all who have some physics instruction and
> probably the only lasting thing measured as surviving decades is NOT
> anything from the canon of physics, instead it is that:

Of course, I doubt 3 decades later any non-science major is going to 
remember much from the physics course other than, I liked it , I didn't like 
it, the teacher was a bastard or what have you.  I remember little from my 
1st grade class (that I don't directly use in daily life; which for first 
grade is most everything, so its not such a good example; but I hope you get 
the point)

> A simple place to begin, as far as I'm concerned, would be to reserve the
> vocational training strictly for physics and engineering majors and for
> everyone else (K - 12) and college non-science majors develop courses in
> which the *students'* understanding concerning the *phenomena* are the
> object of attention.  I think even the physics and engineering majors would
> be all the better for this approach of partitioning the thrust of courses
> at the different levels.

Gee, I was talking about the course for science and engineering students, 
not the course for non-science majors!!!  So actually I have a fair amount 
in common (which I didn't mention, since I was being a devil's advocate) 
with Dewey's views when it comes to the non-science major course.

Joel

BTW I don't advocate not trying to do a better job  when and where we can; 
and in this regard I applaud Dewey's efforts.  But certainly science and 
engineering technology have been doing quite well in the last two centuries 
(certainly as well as society seems to be able to assimilate), and this is 
"despite" mostly traditional instruction.