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Re: Re: AAPT Vision Process



On 8/1/2000 5:24 PM, Leigh Palmer wrote:

I feel that politicization of the AAPT is inappropriate. If the
NSTA is involved then I'm sure that someone is looking after the
store

As someone who just spent a year working on science education issues on
Capitol Hill, let me assure you that this isn't correct. While the NSTA is
doing a fine job, changes in policy need support from lots of groups. When
working on the National Science Education Acts, it would have been great to
have more input from AAPT.

I would not like to see a push to be "inclusive", a buzz word that means we
should be open to harmonizing our teaching with religious ideas like special
creation. It is unclear to me what benefits attend increases in diversity and
number of physics teachers and students. Perhaps someone else in the group can
defend these goals. As for me, I would rather have one physics for all, with
no special dialects.

I'm pretty sure that diversity doesn't mean opening things to creationists,
but I'll defer to the original authors for their interpretation. Increasing
the diversity of physics students and teachers means that the physics
community will have an easier time negotiating the unavoidable cultural
differences that exist between members of our society--and that will help
physics teaching and learning. Increasing the number of physics students and
teachers brings more people to AAPT, and increases the knowledge from which
our organization can draw upon.

I don't think the intent of critical issue #2 is to advocate "special
dialects" of physics, but, again, I'll defer to the original authors.

-ML


--
Michael Lach
Science Department
Lake View High School
Chicago, IL