Re: Why Physics First?

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 11:38 -0400 10/10/02, Edmiston, Mike wrote:

> I did as a student in 1964-1968.  I took physical science as a freshm=
> an,
> just as Joel described, then biology, then chemistry, then physics.
> Many schools are still doing this type of thing.

I suspect that the "physical science" courses that have been
described here are not the common type. Most of the ones I have been
in contact with have been about 90% chemistry and 10% physics, if
they have any time left over at the end of the year. And the general
quality of  the material has been such that they are almost worse
than no course at all.

It has also been typical of physical science courses that they are
mostly taken by the non-academic types, and the serious students who
wanted science courses were steered away from physical science and
took only the traditional biology-chemistry-physics sequence.

I'm not arguing that the non-college-bound students don't need a good
science sequence that is geared to their abilities and goals, only
that the physical science courses I have come in contact with were
generally just "dumbed-down" regular courses, taught by the least
experienced or least competent (let's just put him/her where
he/she'll do the least damage) teacher in the department, and given
the least support in terms of materials, etc. They deserve better,
and so do all the rest of the students.

I continue to argue that the program needs to start much earlier than
the ninth grade, needs to be coordinated with later curricula so we
don't have to start over every time, and needs to be treated as
something other than a throw-away course that can be taught by
anybody. We treat almost every subject as a progression from the
simplest things, taught in the early grades to the most complex
taught in the higher grades and on into college. Only science seems
to be something that we freely ignore until high school or later and
then expect the students to absorb in one or two years. Is it any
wonder that when we ask the students to drink from this firehose,
that we are losing far too many of them?

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.