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Re: [Phys-L] Conceptual Physics Course



Thank you so much for your insightful and thought-provoking comments. While I hope to progress in a fairly systematic manner from brainstorming about the goals of the course to putting the finishing touches on the syllabus and then implementing the plan, I don't want to block out thoughts about some future stage even at this point for fear that they won't occur to me again when I get to the stage in which they belong.

One of the things you mentioned is that it is not tactful to say to the people you are teaching that one of your goals is to teach them to think better. This brings to mind one of the things I want to change about the way I teach. I always have the sense that in the course of a course, I have very little time with the students and I have to make the most of it. I think I always will have that sense but in the past, because of it, I have focused almost exclusively on the physics to the exclusion of all but a little bit of what I'll categorize as motivation and learning methods. So this time, I want to make a point of effectively communicating to the students what my goals are, why I am doing what I am doing, and why I am asking them to do what I am asking them to do. I think I also want to spend some time on getting the students to think about how they are learning. For instance if a student struggles with something and eventually figures it out, I want to talk about the tactic that the student used to finally figure it out and have them think of that tactic as a tool that they can keep handy and try to apply to other situations. One of my points in this paragraph is to remind myself of your message and realize that my plan to tell students what my goals are can backfire on me if I am not careful.

My undergraduate German teachers was one of the best teachers I ever had. I recall (I think verbatim but it has been over 30 years so please forgive me if I misquote you Herr Green) something he said that your first suggestion below calls to mind. He said: "People say learning is fun. That's Quatsch; learning is hard work. It's the knowing that's fun." Also in a contribution to this thread made after the message to which I am replying, John Clement said words to the effect that reading is enjoyable but the learning needed to get up to that stage where it is enjoyable isn't necessarily enjoyable. I guess my position is that learning doesn't have to be fun to be effective (there is no way that German course was fun but after not having started studying German until the freshman year of college, I spent my junior year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology studying physics in German) but it can be both and your point about the importance of it being enjoyable in order for it to have a lasting effect strikes a chord with me. I guess what I usually aim for is "satisfying" and I think that if, over a period of time you continually repeat a scheme in which: you share with people the facts and ideas that they need, in addition to facts and ideas they already have, and then you challenge them with puzzles that they can solve about 75%-85% of the time; they get the satisfaction from solving the puzzles and their appetite is whetted for understanding why the solution is what it is for those puzzles they couldn't solve. So for instance, if you start out with just the right kind of interesting picture book and continually have a person, starting when that person is a young child, read books that are interesting and just a little bit challenging, it is quite possible for that person to enjoy learning how to read by enjoying reading, all the way through. I've seen this happen where the "have them read" part is really just a matter of making the books available to them. The obvious question raised by your first suggestion is, what do you and others do to foster the love of learning and enjoyment of thinking you mentioned below?


-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@mail.phys-l.org [mailto:phys-l-bounces@mail.phys-
l.org] On Behalf Of John Denker
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:12 PM
To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] Conceptual Physics Course



My first suggestion: Item 10 could be strengthened ... and then moved from
the bottom of the list to the top. That is, IMHO,
1') The most important goal is for students to love
learning and enjoy thinking.

Rationale: If they don't see the course as a whole (and almost every part of
it) as a positive experience, they will forget about it as quickly as possible ...
which means the whole exercise will have been a big waste of time and
money.

Also note the following, which is true but unfair and ironic:
a) Suppose the track coach says his goal is to teach people to run
better. That's OK. Everybody knows how to run, but a good coach
can teach them to run better.
b) Suppose the physics teacher says his goal is to teach people to
think better. That is not a tactful thing to say. People think
they know how to think and to learn, and they get resentful and
defensive if anybody suggests they should change their ways. The
ones who would benefit the most, the ones who have no clue what
hundreds (or thousands) of years of learning theory tell us ...
those are the ones who are most resistant.

There is a vicious circle here that can (in favorable cases) be turned into a
virtuous circle, if you can find a way to reverse the momentum: If they enjoy
learning, they will get better at it, and if they get better they will enjoy it
more.


Another semi-related suggestion: This is mostly implicit in several
of the original list items, but could perhaps be made more explicit:

2') Another important goal is for students to appreciate the unity
and power and grandeur of physics. This includes understanding
how each physics idea is connected to others, and connected to
important real-world applications.


Rationale: I really wanted to get the word "connection" in there.
I subscribe to a heavily connectionist theory of thinking and learning.
It has been know explicitly for over 100 years (William James, 1898)
-- and probably going back centuries earlier -- that an idea is
useless and might as well not exist if it cannot be called up when
needed. It is called up based on its /connections/ to other ideas.
There is no real distinction between memory and thought, because
recall is itself a thought process. The key to a good memory is
to take each new idea and mull it over, looking for connections to
what is already known ... and also (!) looking for inconsistencies.

Again we come to something that cannot tactfully be said in front
of students: It is just astonishing how many of them have gone
to school for 12 years yet do not exhibit any systematic understanding
how to learn or how to think. It's obvious that they *can* think,
because they show originality and creativity and abstract thinking
in the games they play outside of school ... yet it seems they have
been trained to never show any sign of critical thinking during school
hours.

All too often, students are led to believe that "learning" is synonymous
with writing down class notes verbatim. All too often, they are taught
never to disagree with the text, never to disagree with the teacher,
and never to ask questions.

We need to do better. This leads to:

3') Another important theme is the importance of asking questions
and the importance of being able to think for yourself. This
touches on creativity and originality, as well as scientific
independence and scientific integrity.


Einstein complained that his teachers expected Kadavergehorsamkeit :
the obedience of a corpse.

Let's be clear: I am not in favor of mindless disobedience any
more than I am in favor of mindless obedience. In fact I generally
recommend using the minimum amount of disobedience necessary to get
the job done.

A radical iconoclast smashes all the icons in sight, just for fun.
That's not me. I am a very conservative iconoclast. I like to
identify the one icon that needs smashing, and then smash it
precisely ... while leaving the other icons intact, or indeed
more secure than they were before.

Specifically, this is why I am offended by the school of thought
that claims special relativity is "exciting" because it allegedly
overthrows all of classical physics. IMHO that attitude is a step
in the wrong direction, very nearly 180 degrees from the right
direction.

Actually, the power and beauty of special relativity comes from the
fact that it is consistent with and /connected/ to everything you
knew about classical physics.
-- A rotation in the xt plane is profoundly similar to a rotation
in the xy plane. It is as similar as it possibly could be without
quite being identical.
-- This /connects/ geometry and trigonometry to kinematics, in
a new, simple, and beautiful way.
-- The relativistic kinetic energy is /connected/ to the classical
kinetic energy in the simplest possible way. Among other things,
this allows us to understand why KE = ½ p*v for slow-moving particles
while KE = p*v for fast-moving particles. We understand both of
those limiting cases _and everything in between_ in terms of the
geometry and trigonometry of spacetime.
-- More generally, we understand the /connection/ between mass,
momentum, and kinetic energy. They are in fact the 0th-order,
1st-order, and 2nd-order terms in a power series.
-- Special relativity /connects/ the electric field to the magnetic
field (and of course connects them both to the geometry and
trigonometry of spacetime).

I am reminded of expressions such as "connecting the dots" and
"seeing the big picture". Special relativity does not overthrow
the pre-existing dots. It connects the dots. If special relativity
seems weird and paradoxical, you're doing it wrong.
http://www.av8n.com/physics/spacetime-welcome.htm

I mention this as just one example of the unity and power and
grandeur of physics ... and also as an example of what the thinking
and learning process looks like, whereby one can be open to new
ideas /without/ overthrowing very many old ideas.

See also next message.
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