Wittingshire: On the Teaching of Physics

Oh, dear, now they're even making physics textbooks that are concerned more with making children feel included than with teaching physics? Why? Physics is fascinating. I didn't have the right stuff to wind up a physicist, but I gave it a good shot when I entered college. Physics has built-in "wow" factors and "eureka" moments. It's also amazingly easy to teach some of the principles using games. Turn those little whippersnappers loose dropping potatoes from different heights, and they'll pick up on why jumping from higher distances is much, much more dangerous than hopping off a curb. Let 'em build catapults. Float things. Heat things. Race things. Build things. Bend things. Try to trap gases or create vacuums. Roast marshmallows, if you can get their attention doing it (and can keep them from smearing hot goo on each other).

Physics, at least at the basic level, is tailor-made for hands-on, truly engaging inquiry that most kids not only can understand but actually enjoy grappling with. It explains everyday things, stuff that matters. It makes you feel like you're getting a handle on the universe and how it works. It always supplies fresh questions, so the quest never ends. How in the world could it get sucked into the self-esteem backwaters when it is so demonstrably wonderful at giving kids (not to mention grown-ups) "I get it! I get it!" moments when dished out plain?

Use the title link to get Amanda's post at Wittingshire, and for a link to the article in The New Atlantis that she references.

From The New Atlantis article by Matthew B. Crawford:

Far from giving physics a wider appeal, I suspect this merely disheartens students. Because it treats them as though they are insensitive to intellectual pleasures, this kind of anti-elitism seems strangely ... elitist. As though students are merely being prepared to assume their place as workers and consumers.

Augh.

Expect a lot of science and engineering book mentions from me for a while. I have no intention of taking this travesty laying down. Some teachers might be pounding science courses into unappetizing mush, but that doesn't mean kids have to settle for that, now does it?