Re: Syllabus for AP physics

[Hugh Haskell <haskell@ODIE.NCSSM.EDU>]

This is really two different questions. If you just want to know what the
AP syllabus is, that is determined by ETS and is available in their
publications and on their web site
(<http://www.collegeboard.org/ap/physics/html/cours001.html>). But if you
want to know what students are learning (or are supposed to be learning or
are trying to learn) in their high school physics course, then that is a
much broader and more difficult question. In some schools, the course that
deals with physics at the level of the AP-C syllabus (that is,
calculus-based) is a first-year course, in others it is reserved for
second-year students. Our school has sent students to Cal Tech who have
completed our first year (roughly equivalent, but with important
ommissions, to the AP-B--algebra/trig-based-- syllabus) course, and others
who have completed our second-year course which generally follows the AP-C
syllabus (mechanics and E&M only, using Halliday & Resnick or Resnick,
Halliday & Krane).

The important thing is that high school syllabi are quite vairable and
depend on any number of factors, including student demand, teacher
preparation, equipment and facilities availability, academic emphasis from
above, geography, demographics, and others. In this country, since we have
no national curriculum, it is impossible to say "what high school physics
students will know" when they arrive at Cal Tech's gate.

Now for the soap-box bit. How do we get around the lack of a national
curriculum? I don't want to leave that to ETS. But I am told that at one
point, around the turn of the last century, Harvard issued the edict that
anyone who expected to be admitted there had to have a certain list of
courses, including physics. This immediately led to a great increase in the
number of students taking physics. It seems to me that, now that we are a
society in which almost two thirds of our high school graduates go on to
college, that the colleges could exercise great control over high school
curricula, including physics, if they publicly announced what they expected
their entrants to have mastered before they arrive, and then stuck to their
guns. This means that they would, for instance, teach their freshman
physics course under the assumption that their students were already
familiar with the basic ideas of kinematics, acceleration, Newton's laws,
etc., etc., and build on that foundation, rather than assuming that all the
students are at a common base of ignorance, so they have to start from the
very beginning. I know of several of our graduates (and, yes, some of them
at Cal Tech) who have been lost to physics because the freshman physics
course that they were required to take was a boring rehash of the physics
they had already mastered in their high school course. Yes, I know, and
counsel students repeatedly, that a repeat of a subject can be looked upon
as an opportunity to learn it even better, but how many college freshmen
are mature enough to act on that abstraction?

We in this country have regarded the ultimate authority of local school
boards as so sacrosanct that we feel we cannot "tell" them what courses to
teach and what material to deal with in those courses. I believe that we
pay a high price in inefficiency as well as ignorance for this dubious
ideal. In a society as mobil as ours and which should be demanding as much
as possible from our citizens, it is important that we not have to "start
over" every time we teach a course such as physics. Much of what I teach in
my high school course is what should have been introduced earlier
(sometimes much earlier) and mastered at some level prior to my seeing the
students. Then I could take them to the next level, instead of just trying
to get everyone to the same lower level.And if I could take them to the
next level, and the colleges could expect that all their incoming students
were at that level, they could go on to a still higher level. Imagine what
a 4-year physics degree could include then!

Of course, this is how math, English and history have been taught for
decades. Shouldn't science be able to enjoy some of those advantages? Why,
as Sheila Tobias pointed out some years back in her small but important
book "They're not Dumb, They're Different" (Tucson, AZ, Research
Corporation, 1990), shouldn't we in science be able to get into important
frontier areas of our discipline with undergraduate students as the
humanities teachers have always been able to do? It could happen, if we
didn't have to start over at the beginning every year because we are afraid
that there is someone in our class who "hasn't seen it before."

Since we seem to lack the political will to undertake this as a society,
maybe the colleges should exercise their will. I hold no illusions that
this would be easy. It couldn't be done all at once, but would have to be
phased in over several years to avoid too much social disruption and to
allow those who cannot measure up now to get caught up. Furthermore, we in
the physics community can't even agree on what topics are most important in
an introductory physics program, or in what order to teach them. Certainly
we have to come to grips with that before we can go any farther. And before
that is possible, we have to agree to abide by the decisions of those who
are elected to decide the issues. It will never work if we don't all agree
to abide by the "rules," and it is important that this be true for the
colleges as well.

Can it be done? I don't know. But it seems to me that if Cal Tech, MIT,
Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Duke, Ohio State, and the
other major degree-granting institutions could get together and tell the
high schools "any student admitted to our presence (not just potential
physics or science majors) must have successfuly completed (among other
similar requirements) a physics course including such-and-such material,"
and (and this is also critical) the companies hiring the graduates of our
universities recognized that a degree from a school conforming to this
scheme was worth a great deal more than one from "Feel-Good U" then the
reform I am talking about could take place. Even institutions that didn't
join in at first would soon see the advantage

What are the odds of its happening? How about the proverbial snowball in hell?

Hugh

> Dear High School Colleagues,
>
> A colleague at Cal Tech asks the following:
>
> > Also, is it possible to get hold of current AP Phys syllabi, just
> > so that we all have some point of reference as to what physics
> > is actually taught in high schools?
>
> If you're teaching AP physics and would be willing to share your syllabus,
> please respond to me directly. Thanks very much in advance!
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Roger A. Freedman
> Dept. of Physics and College of Creative Studies
> Room 2417, Broida Hall
> University of California, Santa Barbara
>
> Mailing address:
> Department of Physics
> UCSB
> Santa Barbara CA 93106-9530
>
>   E-mail: airboy@physics.ucsb.edu
>      WWW: http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/~airboy/
>    Voice: (805) 893-2345
>      FAX: (805) 893-3307
> Voicemail: (800) 344-3147 x4322

***************************************************
Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@odie.ncssm.edu>

"The box said 'requires Windows 95 or better,' so I bought a Macintosh."
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