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Re: [Phys-l] Unit Conversions (was Mass and Energy)



Hi all-
As I understand the discussion so far, Rick is expressing a discomfort with many of John C.'s postings, a discomfort that I happen to share. John essentially finesses the issue by arguing that Rick is too smart to understand it. I would be delighted if Rick could restate his discomfort - if discomfort it is - in a way that prompts John to address the source of discomfort.
On the other hand, I may be misunderstanding the discussion. Am I/
Regards,
Jack


On Sun, 28 May 2006, John Clement wrote:

You are in the fortunate 5% who achieved a high level of understanding as a
result of both life experiences and school. Remember that at one time only
the upper 20% or less went to college, so that colleges had a much higher
proportion of formal operational students. My comment about factor label is
that it did not help students to achieve a higher degree of thinking. But
if you are already able to understand ratios, you will immediately grasp
factor label. My comments are aimed at why the large percentage of students
do not come to good understanding of math and science.

I would suggest reading any of Shayer & Adey's books to grasp the magnitude
of the problem. Both of their paperbacks are available and are not hard to
read. Of course McDermott's papers and other science education papers would
also be revealing.

Michael Shayer is also publishing a paper which shows that in England the
thinking ability of students has gone down significantly in the past 30
years. I have not seen the final paper, but it was reported in the British
press. If so this has also probably happened in the US.

It is also possible that you might have progressed at a faster pace if there
had been good research based curricula in your schools. It is also possible
that you had the luck to have a teacher who intuitively grasped the problems
and did the right thing. The research is aimed at making the few
accidentally good classes the norm rather than the exception.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX





I don't know about others here, but if I were to really believe in
everything John Clement posts to this list then the logical conclusion is
that people are just TOO STUPID to learn much of anything, much less
Physics. It would seem that there are just too many 'formalized'
deficiencies out there to be overcome in any of our poor physics courses.
I'm starting to doubt my own skills and abilities since certainly I
couldn't have escaped all these learning disabilities. I must not have
really learned to read, write, and do arithmetic in K-8, nor learned
Algebra, Geometry, and Trig in HS. I must not have understood anything
useful about Chemistry and Physics in HS, and heaven only knows what was
going on in College and Graduate School, because no one, to my knowledge,
ever directly (or probably indirectly) addressed any of these problems
John
keeps listing. They gave us material to read AND answer questions on
(matched to our tested reading levels), had us memorize both the spelling
and meanings of words--and forced us to write sentences (real sentences)
using these words. We had to memorize our math tables and then do all
kinds of operations (no calculators to help us)--even doing square and
cube
roots by hand. A few teachers may have even given us word problems to do!
We worked through Algebra, Geometry, a real Trig course, and Analytical
Geometry--Calculus was withheld until College. In College I was
surrounded
by other students who seemed to have similar--if not superior--prior
training. I guess it was all just a sham!

;-)

Rick


[Original Message]
From: John Clement <clement@hal-pc.org>

There are several problems here.


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--
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just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley