{"id":4796,"date":"2010-06-24T13:56:24","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T13:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/06\/24\/relatively-comfortable-questio-1\/"},"modified":"2010-06-24T13:56:24","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T13:56:24","slug":"relatively-comfortable-questio-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/06\/24\/relatively-comfortable-questio-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Relatively Comfortable Question: Physics First?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting at the beginning of the uncomfortable questions<\/a> left by readers, we have Tex asking:<\/p>\n

\n

If physics is the basic science that underlies almost every other science, why do American high schools usually teach it in the 3rd or 4th year, after biology and chemistry? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Physics first, then chemistry, then biology?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Physics is the final course in the standard American high school curriculum for two reasons, as far as I can tell: history and math. History is the less convincing of the two, as it amounts to “the courses are in that order because they’ve been in that order for a good long time (well over twenty years).” It’s pure inertia.<\/p>\n

The math argument is that the standard high school science curriculum (Biology, then Chemistry, then Physics) puts the courses in order of increasing mathematical sophistication. You can do a reasonable job of teaching biology with minimal math. Chemistry necessarily requires a bit of algebra, and physics demands at least some familiarity with algebra, if not basic calculus. Students need more time to take the additional math courses that they need to understand physics.<\/p>\n

At least, that’s the argument. There’s a whole community of people who think that the order should be reversed, including people like Physics Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, who is behind Project ARISE<\/a> (“American Renaissance In Science Education.” You know it’s the work of a physicist because it has a really strained acronym…).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m kind of agnostic on this subject. I agree that you can put the sciences in the opposite order and construct a compelling narrative about moving from simple systems to more complex ones. But you can equally well construct a narrative about the traditional ordering, as a sort of iterative process of pulling back the curtain to see what’s really going on. (Of course, that story would argue for teaching more modern physics in high schools, and less block-on-an-inclined-plane mechanics, but that’s a different issue.)<\/p>\n

I don’t think that much of the trouble that American high school students have with science is really coming from the lack of grounding in the “more fundamental” subjects that come later in the curriculum. Most college biology programs don’t require physics of all their students, and I don’t run into many biologists who say “You know, I wish I had taken more physics as a student…” (Most of them say “You know, I really hated my physics classes…”).<\/p>\n

On the other hand, though, I have a certain fondness for the “blow it up and start over” aspect of the “Physics First” movement. I think there are a lot of things that we do in science education for historical reasons, and I often think we might be better off scrapping the entire curriculum and starting over from scratch. To the extent that “Physics First” makes people think more about how and why we teach science, I think it’s a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starting at the beginning of the uncomfortable questions left by readers, we have Tex asking: If physics is the basic science that underlies almost every other science, why do American high schools usually teach it in the 3rd or 4th year, after biology and chemistry? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Physics first, then… Continue reading Relatively Comfortable Question: Physics First?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-education","category-physics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}