GCSE Physics

[GD]

Take a look at this.

We can't have young adults possibly being energy literate now can we?

[JohnB]

It's 33 years since I scraped through my Physics A Level, and longer since the O Level, and I can't now remember what we studied, but it certainly wasn't anything like that. We actually did experiments and calculations, and learned stuff that could lead on to becoming a scientist or an engineer. It probably also helped when I became an accountant because I could understand what engineers were talking about.

I suppose it helps the government if science can be just another branch of politics, and they won't have to deal with those pesky scientists who tell them inconvenient truths.

[Greenbeast]

i work in a grammar school and from what i hear things are changing for the worse in science

the physics teacher was quizzing me on network trafficking because she has to talk about network traffic, usage and analog/digital uses and conversion, etc...

its ridiculous, when i did gcse and a-level physics 6 years ago we actually learnt physics in physics and IT in IT lessons

[biffvernon]

When I went into teaching, over 30 years ago, it was as a geology teacher. Having read Limits to Growth while a geology undergraduate, I realised that working for a mining or oil company would not help humanity but I thought geology was something it would be good if more folk knew about. Then the education system decided that geology was not a subject worth teaching. After dallying about with geography, which turned out to be utterly unscientific and remarkably similar to what we read from Wellington Grey's description of the 'new physics' I moved to maths. I thought that logic and truth would at least be at the core of that subject. Wrong again. Now I do woodwork. Low energy, sustainable maunfacturing and my customers say 'Thank you'.

[skeptik]

http://www.wellingtongrey.net/articles/ ... r-aqa.html

?A paper question asked: `Why must we develop renewable energy sources.? This is a political question. Worse yet, a political statement. I?m not saying I disagree with it, just that it has no place on a physics GCSE paper.

Pupils are taught to poke holes in scientific experiments, to constantly find what is wrong. However, never are the pupils given ways to determine when an experiment is reliable, to know when an experiment yields information about the world that we can trust. This encourages the belief that all quantitative data is unreliable and untrustworthy. Some of my pupils, after a year of the course, have gone from scientifically minded individuals to thinking, ?It?s not possible to know anything, so why bother?? Combining distrust of scientific evidence with debates won on style and presentation alone is an unnerving trend that will lead society astray.?

It looks like the idiocy of post-modernist methology and relativism, which has, over the past 30 years, reduced much higher ?liberal arts? teaching to the level of meaningless blather, is now attempting to infect science teaching. A society which is incapable of objective analysis, and in fact doesn?t believe that it is possible, is wonderfully manipulable.

There?s a lovely similarity in this Blairite approach to science teaching and the Straussian neoconservative (or 'Nazi' if you prefer an older terminology) attitude to knowledge ? that ?truth? and knowledge should be reserved to the leadership elites, and that the masses should be lied to (in order to produce the required effect desired by leadership, for the greater good of society as a whole) and prevented from acquiring the means of thinking for themselves. Leadership action to produce a permanent state of fear, anxiety and indecision in the masses being the ideal.

Hmm

[GD]

Boy, and I thought I was cynical!

[redlantern]

We're screwed the whole way through. I looked at a 14-year-old's combined "science"* multiple-choice on rock types. On the surface, it looked complicated enough. Unfortunately, I could answer them all correctly by performing the same kind of logic you do with a Sudoku. So I was left wondering just how much knowledge my young friend was actually accumulating.

I think we don't want to pay for a decent education system, and so substitute good teachers with a lot of IT that looks pretty, makes teachers and students happy, and retards real education.

[21st_century_caveman]

skeptik, your analysis is spot on if quite scary, i suppose it depends whether you believe its a cock-up or a conspiracy, neither would surprise me.

I think its more symptomatic of the general reduction in thinking going on in society as a whole, it just happens to also be quite useful if you want to set up an Orwellian police state.
In some sections of society people now take pride in the fact that they know nothing about science or technology, but then when i was at school it was never "cool" to be good at science or even to think about things and those attitudes are now even more wide-spread.

I just hope that PO will destroy any plans (if they exist) for an authoritarian police state, but like so much with PO, it could go either way.

[Andy Hunt]

I just hope that PO will destroy any plans (if they exist) for an authoritarian police state, but like so much with PO, it could go either way.

The other question of course is whether an authoritarian police state would be any worse than the chaos and gang rule which might arise in the absence of one.

Iraq being a case in point.

[GD]

I just hope that PO will destroy any plans (if they exist) for an authoritarian police state...

I think this is the most likely thing to happen. All the signs are there.