Re: [Phys-L] Corporal punishment

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Unfortunately science can inform social policy which in turn has an effect
on research, education and learning.  In turn the social policy is formed by
people who have fixed paradigms.  This is similar to the situation of
students who come into classes with strong fixed preconceptions.
Educational progress is then limited by these strong paradigms, but IE has
shown some ways to break through them.

When you see that political groups are promoting policies which have been
shown by evidence to be wrong, it just points to the fact that we have
failed to educate our students.

This impinges on science in general.  We may feel that we are isolated in
physics, but that is not true.  Our funding, and our ability to teach
without restraint can be limited by the ignorant people.  It is already
limited in the pre-college area where teachers are afraid to bring up
evolution or cosmology.  It has also produced limitations on the methods
that teachers can use in class.  So IE may not be possible.

There was more evidence on corporal punishment that just came up as a news
report today.  Apparently it increases the incidence of mental disease.  But
this should not be surprising.  How much this extends to grading and other
negative consequences is not known.  But negative consequences are known to
be less influential than positive ones.  This has been known for quite a
while from behaviorist research.

It is nice to remain in the ivory tower, until it crumbles because of
outside pressures.  The task of education needs to be done by people who are
knowledgeable about cognitive resarch and education research.  The
information on corporal punishment is not crap.  But it is tangentially
related to education, so it may not be of interest to all.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> I may indulge in self-flagellation after reading all the crap 
> that's been posted today.