Re: Our textbook

[Ludwik Kowalski <kowalskil@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

1) On Thursday, Apr 8, 2004, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

> One advantage of a big text is it can later be 
> used for reference. However, this likely only 
> applies to Jr/Sr ones.  

Most of my students are Jr/Sr (I know it does
not make sense for an introductory course but 
that how it is at Montclair State University).
And most of them, if not all, sell the textbooks
back to the bookstore as soon as the final exam 
is over.

2) John Clement revealed some aspects of the
textbook issue of which I was not aware. Let
me add another aspect. I want to illustrate it
with a specific example. Our textbook (Serway
and Faughn, "College Physics," 6th edition)
has seven chapters on E&M (from page 464
to 652).  The material, as it should be, is
developed in a sequence in which one chapter
builds on what has already been covered in 
those before. Deciding what to skip and how 
to deal with consequences is not always an 
easy task for a typical teacher. It is like 
writing a new textbook.

Mos
t of us, myself included, just skip. 
Knowing how much time is left, and knowing 
that optics is very important for biology 
students I just decided to skip Chapters 
20 and 21. But in doing this I realized 
that many topics on which I spent so much 
time were developed essentially to prepare 
students for what I am going to skip. Was 
it a waste of time? The answer is not at 
all obvious. It leads to a set of 
questions which I hope somebody will try
to formulate. They have to do with such 
issues as “what to teach?, why to teach 
it? And who is to decide?”  

By the way, is my university unique in 
that an introductory physics course 
(the non-calculus kind) is one of the
last taken before graduation?
Ludwik Kowalski