From: bm665@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jay Robert Hauben)
Newsgroups: sci.edu,sci.physics,alt.amateur-comp
Subject: Fate of the Energetic Teacher
Date: 2 Oct 1992 05:57:04 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bm665@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jay Robert Hauben)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


     Early this Summer I posted a request for help teaching a 
STATICS course to pre-engineering students. I received perhaps 25 
responses both publically posted and by e-mail. Virtually all 
were informative and helpful. With this help, for which I am 
genuinely thankful, I looked forward to teaching the class. In 
preparation I read through the text, solved many of the problems, 
and sorted out how I would approach many of the topics. But, at 
the last minute the class was cancelled. The reason given was 
"insufficient registration". There were however as many or more 
students registered in my STATICS class this Summer as in 
previous Summers when the course was not cancelled.
 
     Also this Fall, for the first time in ten years, I am not 
teaching the Engineering Physics laboratories. My usual classes 
are being taught by other instructors. Over the ten years that I 
taught the Engineering Physics laboratories many students have 
commented to me and to others about my ability to explain the 
concepts of physics, my availablity to students needing help and 
the high level of experimentation performed in the lab. Without 
my involvement or explanation to me or the students, the 
instructors and the content of the labs have changed. Still many 
of the students taking these labs seek me out. But now it is to 
find out why the class has changed and why I am not teaching the 
course anymore. Most of them express the loss this represents. 
Some have asked what if anything can be done to return the labs 
to their former higher and friendlier level.
 
     This situation is not unusual here. In the last ten years 
there has been a lowering of standards in the main K-12 system 
that feeds the school where I teach. Every year fewer "college 
prep" and "advanced" courses were offered until in the last few 
years none at all have been offered. Now it seems the more 
advanced courses at the college freshman and sophomore level are 
being gutted or watered down.
 
     Without the more advanced courses, the more elementary ones 
suffer as well because there are no more higher or advanced 
courses to prpare for. From my point of view, the result can only 
be the weakening of our whole society by lowering still further 
the intellectual level sought for by the educational system.
 
     Not only in my case but in many others I have seen, the 
energetic, resourceful and student oriented teacher is not 
allowed to practice the art of teaching for long without road 
blocks or worse put in his or her way.
 
     I suspect that this phenomena is wide spread. I wonder if 
anyone has an understanding of it, whether there have been 
successful fights against it and what the experience of other 
teachers has been.
 
P.S. I am this semseter teaching the Physics laboratory for 
health para-professional majors. The course is at a conceptual, 
almost non mathematical level. The challenge is a big one: to do 
meaningful physics labs with a minimum of mathematics. Any words 
of advice and encouragement would again be put to good use. (The 
text being used in the course is "The Physics of Everyday 
Phenomena" by W. Thomas Griffith.)
Newsgroups: sci.edu,misc.education,misc.kids