🚀 go-pugleaf

Don, Aren't there degrees of everthing.  Are you pushing for some
impossible standard for the student.  Even physics professors don't
truely appreciate physics(remember your example from the other day) if
you apply such a narrow standard.  Is the only one who appreciates music
the composer?  Don't we all profit from even a minor understanding of
physics??
Al Gibson


On Mon, 13 Mar 1995, Donald E. Simanek wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Mar 1995, Henry Deemer wrote:
>
> > For those of you who reacted so strongly against this non-
> > mathematical approach, I would urge you to examine Paul Hewitt's stuff
> > and try a little of it before passing judgment.
> >
>
> I was one who reacted with some *skepticism* that one could teach any
> meaningful physics without *any* mathematics, and I'm still skeptical. I
> am very familiar with Hewitt's books, and had a long discussion with him
> about his philosophy just after the first edition of 'Conceptual Physics'
> came out.
>
> You remark that 'it works' and that you are 'reaching more students'.
> Does that mean more than 'more students react positively to the course'?
> Have you determined whether they are learning more (or any) physics? What
> can they *do* with what they've learned, beyond talking glibly (and
> conceptually, of course) *about* some physics. Are we teaching any more
> than a 'physics appreciation course' comparable to the standard 'music
> appreciation course' in which one learns *about* music, but doesn't learn
> to *do* it? One can talk glibly about musical styles, famous composers,
> etc, but may not have any *functional* understanding of music.
>
> This concern is not limited to physics. When I was at Mankato State I had
> fruitful interaction with a music professor who was concerned that the
> standard music appreciation course was useless fluff. So he devised a
> course that attempted to develop 'listening skills' and even 'performance
> skills'. He argued that you really can't appreciate music unless you know
> the technical nuts and bolts of it, and have sharpened your perceptions to
> recognize nuances of tempo, instrumentation, pitch, musical scales,
> acoustic properties of instruments, how the ear perceives sound, etc. I
> think he was right. I.e., you need to know what to listen for, and
> understand how the composer and performer have utilized physics and
> psychology to paint an aural picture for you. His approach was very like
> that of a physics teacher.
>
>         -- Donald
>