I really appreciated Mike Ugawa's message about physics as an
intellectual enterprise. His message is well written and is quite
congruent with my own feelings.
In his message he mentioned a problem that I see brewing. He said:
<quote> So much of the rest of the educational spectrum has gone over
to a much more introspective, "...and how do YOU feel about that?...,"
approach." <end quote>
That is clearly true at Bluffton College. I think the Science
Department is indeed "the last bastion of the kind of logic and applied
quantitative reasoning..." to quote Ugawa again. However, we are
getting some pressure to teach science using the "how do you feel about
that" approach. Students complain that they don't get to have good
discussions or debates in their science classes. Of course we know
that debates go on in science all the time... we do it on this list.
However, when my primary job is to make sure the students have a basic
grasp of the material in a standard calculus-based physics course, we
can't spend much time debating the finer points. This is especially
true when the students are unwilling to put their noses to the
grindstone and develop sufficient skills that they can even recognize
the finer points.
I tried to involve the students in a discussion about the ideas of
inertial mass and gravitational mass, and I told them about some of the
discussions taking place on phys-l. Their attitude was, well if you
experts can't figure it out, why are you bothering us with it? Wait
until you get it figured out, then teach it to us.
I think this means they want to eat their cake and have it too. (1)
Let's have some discussions or at least some classes that are more fun
than boring lecture... but... (2) don't make us think too hard, or have
to prepare for class, etc. Just tell us what we need to pass this
course.
I agree I could have the students spend some time in class discussion
about how they would predict an experiment will come out, or on the
best approach to solve a particular problem. But in addition to a
student body that prefers to discuss things on an extremely elementary
level, we just began a semester system in which we have two 14-week
semesters whereas we used to have three 10 week quarters. So I am
supposed to cover in 28 weeks what used to take 30 weeks... and I'm
supposed to spend more class time in "discussion" and less time in
lecture.
I can only see doing this if students are willing to spend more
out-of-class time struggling with the text and solving problems so they
come to class prepared to have discussions. But this is extreme
dreaming. That level of "honing the intellect" is something I see in
only a small minority of my students.
Thus, I very much want to view physics the way Ugawa suggests, but I
sure am having a hard time doing it.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817