From
A physics teacher begs for his job back:
The thing that attracts pupils to physics is its precision. Here, at last, is a discipline that gives real answers that apply to the physical world. But that precision is now gone. Calculations — the very soul of physics — are absent from the new [UK syllabus]. Physics is a subject unpolluted by a torrent of malleable words, but now everything must be described in words.
In this course, pupils debate topics like global warming and nuclear power. Debate drives science, but pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate. Scientific argument is based on quantifiable evidence. The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins. But my pupils now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power plants, without any real understanding of how they work or what radiation is.
How well I remember the grand attraction of hard science!
In school, for the longest time, I performed at the "okay" level in subjects like English, buoyed only by some kind of native talent (which made up for the fact that I could not point out the subject of a sentence to save my life). I did much better in the sciences, where it was (or at least it felt) easier to find one's way with the tools and skills to find the right answer, even if all the truly horrendous stuff (e.g., the resistance of the air) was conveniently forgotten for the time being.
Grey's description of the syllabus reminds me of a set of humorous questions purporting to be from math tests over the past half century, the first and last questions of which are:
1950: A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His costs amount to 4/5 of his selling price. What is his profit? What percentage of his selling price is his profit?
...
2000: A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10. Underline the word "potatoes" and discuss why this problem is personally meaningful to you and how it contributes to an understanding of cultural diversity.
Grey's blog post hints that perhaps there is more to this "humor" than meets the eye, at least in the UK.
Perhaps it's time to resume learning Chinese?
Cheers...
