Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-L] critical thinking exercise : DC circuits



Then I was a mentor to another teacher. When I pointed out that the book
had some very bad errors, he didn't listen, and continued to use the bad
info. So teachers are just as guilty as publishers. They have very rigid
paradigms that are difficult to challenge and change.
What got me started in pedagogy many years ago was a high school
teacher who took CHEM 101 to brush up on his chemistry. On more
occasions than I wish to recount, he would come to me, ask a few
question, and then state, "I have been teaching it wrong for ___
years." I totally admired this teacher.

The more I looked into it, the more I realized that some teachers have
no clue what they are teaching, believe the book to be the gospel, and
are themselves afraid of the equipment (so labs are minimized or
abolished). Students are very adept at identifying teachers who know
less than the students about a topic. And the teacher ruins the
experience for them. A few provinces in Canada have made it mandatory
for HS teachers to have an undergraduate degree (at least a minor) in
the topics they will be teaching. The teaching credential is a 14 - 18
month after degree.


Also errors not only propagate to later editions, the publishers are cheap
so they lift erroneous pictures and graphs from one textbook and put them in
others. So the error propagate to other texts supposedly by other authors.
Yep, seen lots of this.


John M. Clement
Houston, TX



What fascinates me is how so many bugs can persist for so long.
How can there be a thousand errors in a thousand pages ...
in the THIRD
EDITION?

Only the third? I started using the 7th edition of a
first-year chemistry textbook. There is a picture of a simple
electric-sector mass spectrometer with + and - flipped.
Actually, a student brought it to my attention. I informed
the publisher and one of the authors.
Tenth edition: still wrong.

A colleague and I picked apart a first-edition "Engineering
for Chemists" textbook much like you did a few years ago. We
had about one notable error every two pages. One major error
I remember is that the author occasionally used Co as the
symbol for copper. (Co is cobalt; Cu is copper.) Sent all the
errors to the author and publisher. The publisher responded,
"stylistic preferences." I just looked up the book. Still in
the first edition. 580 pages. 20 cm × 25 cm (8 in × 10 in).
Sells for 200 $.

And you wonder why I avoid publishers.



_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@phys-l.org
http://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l
Dr. Roy Jensen
(==========)-----------------------------------------¤
Lecturer, Chemistry
E5-33F, University of Alberta
780.248.1808