8 Jul
2012
8 Jul
'12
10:19 a.m.
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:21:13 +0100 (BST), ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony
Duell) wrote:
One of my hobbies at school was disrupting lessons by
asking nasty
qeustions _on the subject of the lesson_. Point being had they kicked me
out for doing that, my parents would have exploded with the school
Seriously.
I once walked out a physics lesson and said I would only return when the
teacher had actually learnt some basic physics. That did not go down
well. But, you know, I am still waiting for a defintion of a (scientific)
measurement that does not involve comparison to a standard.
I think the problem was more with the school than the teacher, they
should have got a teacher who knew the subject.
Sadly, there is the same problem here. A lot, if not most, of the
primary and secondary school teachers-to-be here do not know even basic
mathematics. The University here (the one which produces engineers and
Ph Ds in engineering, physics and chemistry) added an extra year to the
M Sc courses long ago, so as to allow the students to catch up with the
maths and physics. Even in the early 1970s, the curriculum in the UK up
to O-levels was at least a year ahead of that here in Sweden; I went to
a school for a year in Yorkshire when I was 15 (5th form) and during
that one year I had to catch up with half the 4th form maths and
physics, in addition to doing the 5th form syllabus and taking O-levels.
When I came back I learned no new maths, physics or chemistry for the 3
years at school here until I went to University. I should have stayed on
in England.
/Jonas