🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 14 Mar 1995, gibson wrote:

> 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

Thank you, Al, for a thoughtful response. It is my feeling that fruitful
discussion is often stimulated by taking a very clear-cut position,
sometimes playing the devil's advocate, to draw out other positions more
effectively. At least that has been fruitful on discussion groups I've
been on much longer than I've been on this one (such as the SKEPTIC
group). However, this PHYSHARE group is puzzling. I read the message
threads and find a lot of people who don't seem to be reading with care,
post hastily thought-out responses, and often end up talking past each
other, using the same words (often ed-biz jargon) and, I suspect, not
having clear definitions of those words, and not all understanding the
same definitions. In fact, I've seen very little *serious* and
*thoughtful* discussion, here--it's mostly parroting of positions.

You've given me an opportunity to post some observations I've been saving
up, related to many messages of the past week.

No one has bothered to give even one example of a concept in physics of
any importance which can effectively be presented without mathematics.
Yet someone a couple of weeks ago seemed to be saying that was possible.
Now folks have backed off to the position that it's ok to use algebra in
a 'non-mathematical' course.

No one has defined what exactly a *concept* is in physics. Do we all mean
the same thing when we use that word?

I've gotten a surprising number of *private* messages expressing
agreement with one or another point I've made. Why didn't those folks
have the courage to state their agreement in *their own words* to the
whole group? Were they afraid to publicly agree with me? What's wrong here?

I'll state my tentative positions on several things for the record:

(1) Formula plug-in. We all know the truth of what Alan Gibson said,

> I thought I knew physics when I started teaching.  I think I LEARNED more
> physics the first 3 years I taught than in all my years in school.  Wehn I
> have student teachers they are amazed that you can't just repeat the
> formula to explain the physics.  How many of us have heard a A student
> say, I can solve the problems, but I dont really understand what it is all
> about.

And what Brian Patrick Martin wrote:

> I know first hand that someone who is adept mathematically can "do"
> physics well enough to get A's and B's in a college freshman Physics
> course and have little or no understanding of the underlying concepts. I
> got an A and a B in my 1st and 2nd semesters of Physics I in 1981 at an
> engineering school by playing the game of know the forula and solve for
> the missing variable. But test taking is not physics

A mere equation-jockey does not necessarily *understand* math
conceptually, and probably will not understand *physics* conceptually either.

Most of us deplore the 'find the formula and plug in numbers' approach to
physics course survival. Why do students do it? Because some teachers
*let* them do it! It's the nature of the exams. Are we so astute of ed-biz
philosophy, yet not clever enough to design an exam to thwart that kind of
student response? Students are lazy. Most of us are lazy. I was a lazy
student--when my profs let me get away with it. Fortunately many of them
had higher standards than that, and weren't about to pander to student
perceptions of a 'good' course and a 'good' teacher. They figured that if
students were so wise as to know what a course should have, and how the
professor should teach it, then they didn't need formal instruction.

I say, "Look carefully at your exams, teachers, for the clue to why your
students perform in certain manners." Many of them *are* clever enough to
realize the easy way to get their desired grade on your exams. Therefore
they might be clever enough to do well on better-constructed exams, ones
which encourage the kind of learning process we desire from students.

As I said earlier:

> I was one who reacted with some *skepticism* that one could teach any
> meaningful physics without *any* mathematics, and I'm still skeptical.

(2) What kind of physics course do we want? I also challenged people to
decide whether they are teaching *physics* or teaching *about* physics:

> 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.

You ask whether only a composer or performer can appreciate music. In one
sense, I say 'yes'. The listener can *appreciate* music on a gut or
emotional level, yet not necessarily *understand* music on an intellectual
level. I ask you, what is education about? I'm of the old fashioned school
which holds that it should be 'of the mind', i.e., intellectual. It should
not play to the emotions merely. It should develop powers of analysis and
synthesis, i.e., functions of the mind. One does not need a credit course
to appreciate music on an emotional level, any more than one needs a
credit course to enjoy watching football or basketball etc. I'm not sure
we should give 'academic' credit for performance skills, such as music or
sports. I think we ought to have a separate category for intellectual
powers as separate and distinct from physical skills, performance skills,
memorization skills, etc.

Once the word 'academic' meant 'of the mind'. Today it means 'anything
one does in a school, mostly sports and socializing.

(3) Back down to earth in the 'real' classroom of today. Am I being
ivory-tower unrealistic to expect real concept development, *using
mathematics*, in the high school physics classroom? I think it can be
done if one doesn't try too much. Don't be enyclopaedic. Don't attempt
things which are beyond the level of the course (i.e. don't expect to
develop concepts related to elementary particle theory, the expansionary
universe, relativity, quantum mechanics). One must crawl before walking.
I'd be happy if students came out of high school

a) comfortable with algebra, and the ability to think about physics using
that level of math,

b) comfortable with geometric concepts,

c) able to test assertions about nature in the laboratory,

d) able to make graphs of data, and *interpret* graphs intelligently,

e) able to convert verbal statements about nature into mathematical
statements and use them to reach correct conclusions which can be tested
against nature,

f) ability to 'sweat the details', use technical words with precision,

g) a skeptical attitude toward unsupported claims of knowledge,

h) and finally, to realize the limitations and the strengths of whatever
they think they have 'learned'.

If students have achieved these few things, they are prepared to take on
greater challenges later. Notice how many of *my* goals include
mathematics, even *depend* on mathematics? In fact, if a student comes to
me and says "How should I prepare in high school for a career in a
scientific or technical field?" I say, "Take all the math you can, learn
to *think* mathematically, but don't be content with mere mathematical
manipulation. Use math to *understand* science." As a college teacher,
I'd rather have a student who could think math than one who had taken
high school physics. I'd even be happy with one who had *only* math
skills, for *then* I'd have a solid base on which to build physics
*concepts*. (Sorry, Paul H., I just can't buy it the other way around.)
I honestly am not convinced that one can build *any* meaningful physics
concepts without some mathematics, and the more mathematics, the solider
will be the concepts. And you folks haven't done anything to convince me.

I have *never* encountered a student who was good in physics, who had
good technical *and* conceptual grasp of physics but was not good
in mathematics. Have you? If someone presented an example of such a student,
I'd want to look carefully at the physics exams the student took. :-)
Better yet, I'd want to see that that student could do on one of *my*
exams. We get only as much as our exams demand, and only then if we
haven't capitulated to grade inflation.

In summary, we should take as our goal (students and faculty alike) the
attitude that mere information isn't what we are about. Physics is a
process. It's not enough that students know *what* physics says, but they
should know *how* we know what we claim we know about science, *how* can
those claims be tested, and *how* we find out new things.

This is science in the liberal arts tradition, which is exactly where I
feel it ought to be.

Reading this list, and interacting with high school physics teachers at
AAPT regional meetings, I have the disturbing feeling that many physics
teachers exist in a world of their own, insulated and isolated from
non-academic physicists. Many of them have 'gotten by' without forming
solid concepts themselves. Many did not excel in physics courses
themselves. Fortunately many have overcome the limitations of their formal
education through self-education (the best kind). Some are, out of
kindness, trying to spare their students the mistakes and indignities of
their own education. Most seem to feel that some physics is 'good for
everybody'. Surely most physics taught in the past did not do anyone any
good. But are the modern approaches doing more good, or are they just
different? I've observed this scene for only about 30 years, and it seems
to me that even the better students today aren't really learning any more
useful physics than 30 years ago, i.e., very little. They'd be better off
mastering mathematics.

Is it too much to ask that we judge a course's success by what students
can correctly and effectively *do* with the materials of the course?

        -- Donald