tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34480619.post8899513469415679564..comments2024-03-11T13:47:03.621-05:00Comments on Physics and Physicists: Considering Science EducationZapperZhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15861398273820851809noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34480619.post-90282892855165106322008-03-25T10:33:00.000-05:002008-03-25T10:33:00.000-05:00It's a nice article, but I find talk about science...It's a nice article, but I find talk about science education like this a little narrow. My daughter's school district, and as far as I can tell the whole of Connecticut's school system, tries hard to encourage what they call HOTS, Higher Order Thinking Skills. Experiment and method are definitely part of this attempt, but Science is insinuated into the process rather than center stage.<BR/> My 9-year-old daughter is not keen on systematic approaches to things. It's too much like hard work, and there's always the tension between pleasing Daddy and rebelling against daddy. For myself, I try to put in place a background in which systematization is good, until it ties you down and must be modified or replaced.<BR/> I suspect that the best science education that many children get is the discipline and endless repetition with variation of playing a musical instrument, hopefully to a high enough level to understand the necessity of both systematization and feeling, and the tension between them.<BR/> The intellectual music and joy of science is hard to hear and to feel.<BR/><BR/>It is as easy to see the environmental failures of science as the successes, and to see the hypocrisy of blaming these consequences of science on anyone else who can be found to take the fall. The benefits of a scientific advance are indeed often 50 years in the future, but the bad consequences of not quite understanding follow as certainly, even if another 50 years later. Deny this if you will, but I think it is how non-scientists see the rhetoric of how purely wonderful Science is.Peterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08654675777726560464noreply@blogger.com