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Physicists Work on Physics' Uncool Image
WindowsTroll writes "Since it seems that science doesn't appeal to the youth of today, physicists are trying to make physics kid friendly. From the article, 'Bicycle stunts, rap music and modern dance -- all in the name of Einstein.' I am particularly interested in the modern dance, thinking that this is probably a better approach of studying oscillations than the springs that I used when I was in college."
Real physicists like Stephen Hawking, and fictional ones like Quinn Mallory, are very cool!
Won't it make you look like the crazy bum at the park?
With the posting and the succeeding and whatnot. GLAVIN!
I believe one Bill Nye The Science Guy has already accomplished making Physics (and science in general) "cool".
This may the only way to reach the MTV Generation.
1. Lift Pint Glass
2. Sip
3. Repeat
4. Caculate F=ma as fall off barstool
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
As soon as they figure out you're trying to teach them something they'll turn on you!
... Jordi was THE coolest guy on Next Generation.
Seriously, did he EVER get laid in those 7 years?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think they should get MC Hawking to promote physics
:) I still like " F*ck the Creationists" best :)
http://www.mchawking.com/
He rocks
since the 80's we've only laughed at rap used as a promotional tool... You suckas got SERVED... by relativity!
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I already thought physics was cool... I mean... come on, you can't get much cooler than being able to calculate the proportions of kelvin degrees as you approach zero!
E=MC Einstein
The flipside of that double-edged sword is that physics will be infiltrated by people who want to be "cool", rather than just smart. Physics is already cool, because it *creates* coolness. Most "cool" kids aren't cool at all; they're just smart at looking cool, copying the people who other people say are cool. Truly cool physics is asymptotically low entropy; that won't be making the cover of the _Rolling Stone_ anytime soon.
--
make install -not war
I meant this for the mobile phone story, but I guess it still sorta applies...
The shit is hard.
Like computers/programming, kids will pick it up if they have the interest...
Must they sully the good physics professions with rap music and such?
Yep, whip out the 70s slang dictionary and get this process started.
Maybe SI units can become more commonly used due to gram and kilogram drug mass measurements.
It all links to the reasons that smart kids are so unpopular at school. Maybe because being smart is seen as an attempt to suck up to the teachers, or picking on nerdy kids is a defence mechanism to cope with lack of ability, but Physics Expert = Geek in many people's eyes.
Quoth the server, "404."
It will seems forced, fake, and in the long run even more dorky.
Kids generally don't care that tony hawk can do a 900 degree spin on a vert because he has (or hasn't, no clue) a calculus text book. The only way to get kids interested in the sciences is to get the kids to ask questions about things non-social. Put Descartes on their bookshelf. Ask them classic philosophical questions when they are young and the rest will follow.
How do you tittilate an ocelot?
Oscillate it's tits a lot!
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
To make sciences look cool, you need to fix the problem that causes nerds to be unpopular.
As if
Donnie, you're out of your element.
"Where the hell is Louie?"
"Well, you tell me. Louie left his house at 3:00 pm traveling at a rate of 35 miles per hour. If he has to travel 60 miles, what time will Louie arrive?"
"... Depends if he stops to see his ho'." "Thats what we call a variable!"
We hope that this will make up for that stupid Yakov Smirnov bit about Ovietsay UssiaRay.
Re-run a show like "Beakman's world", or shoot a similar one. I liked that show much when I was 10 years younger (and I was putting legos together after school).
Things you probably cant do nowadays but we did in high school (which was only 8 yrs ago)
1) Play with radioactive stuff
2) Use transformers to run some 14kV distribution lines up and down the classroom to show the decrease in cable loss
3) Show that the high voltage back-emf spikes from a relay closing can jam your nerve signals and leave you unable to move (ala taser)
4) Look inside classmates with ultrasound
5) Find out how much voltage it takes to blow up a capacitor
Even then our teacher had a closet full of 'special equipment' that he'd smuggle home every time the inspectors came round to visit.
I loved physics and i can assure you that 90% of my high school classmates concurred that it was better than chemsitry or biology or social "science". The experiments make it fun.
In fact, you may not be qualified to do it if you don't think it is cool.
On the other hand, there are tons of cool physics experements that teachers could do in high school classrooms with the right equpment.
*disclaimer* I hold a B.S. in Engineering Physics
I think what you really want is some damped oscillations, man.
....physicians are conscious they must rebrand their shunned science to appeal to young people.
;)
physicians? don't they mean physicists?
You were obviously using the wrong kind of springs in college...
I just know at some point I am going to have to see some physicist/actor doing a rap about how government grants put the schnizzle in his projectizzle - or something even scarier, middle-aged, balding, white backup dancers...
<shudder>
Our friends up north teach Comic Book Physics!
Professor uses Spider-Man to teach physics
My graduate fellowship (in physics) requires me to spend two days a week working with the science classes at a local high school, and I can say from experience that gimmicky pedagogical tricks like those mentioned in the article aren't the way to get kids (except maybe very young children) interested in science. The stuff just comes off as incredibly lame, and physicists end up looking like bigger geeks than they already are.
The way to engage kids is simply to show them the physics at work. I've got kids making plasma in a microwave, measuring the temperature of the sun with a cup of water, studying paper airplane trajectories, making stereo speakers. Physics is interesting and it's ubiquitous, so there's always something kind of cool that the kids can relate to. The secret is to let them see what's happening, get their hands dirty, and most importantly, let them ask the questions.
Find interesting (but safe) project, put them in charge, and they're hooked.
Physics will be cool when learning is cool.
See you on the quark spin, square.
more kids need to see examples of it in the things they enjoy.
I had a science teacher who could get anybody to understand scientific principles this way.
Matbe It didn't make them want to become scientists, but at least when they walked out of that class they understood and could apply the principles to thing they did enjoy.
He taught shop.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
had his own special way to make physics problems interesting... he combined cats and kenetic energy...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
Great little song about how boffins can be cooler here:
Boffin Boffins
Very funny stuff.
Build affordable houses, transport. Their knowledge
isn't sufficiently translated to the betterment of the masses. They don't even encourage people to build on high ground.
I wants my transporter raygun that can make people and objects disappear and reappear on the ninth planet out from Sirius*. Then physicists can try to be kewl all they want.
(* This is purely for experimental purposes, and not to make my wife, kids, doggie doo-doo, Hoover salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses, that guy Bob who wears his hat on backwards and thinks Gremlins are awesome cars, my mother-in-law, recently used hash-pipes, small electrical appliances that I accidentally dropped, used motor oil, former Worldcom executives, David Hasselhoff, Germany, WiFi interferers, anybody who disagrees with me disappear.)
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Saw a video of a guy pour liquid oxygen into one of those steel bbq pits found in public parks. It was filled with with charcoal. When the liquid oxygen hit the charcoal, without any flame or ignition source, it spontaniously combusted.
Never once while the guy was walking over to the bbq pit and spilling liquid oxygen all over the place did I think he was uncool. Entropy in action for the stupid, I do not know how he survived.
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Gerry Haddad, Chief of CSIRO Industrial Physics, has made similar noises recently about the lack of interest in Physics in Australia. You can some of his thoughts on the issue. It strikes me that a lot of the lack of interest in physics amongst kids stems from a lack of interest in physics amongst their teachers. I would have thought that inspiring teachers were one of the best ways to enthuse kids. Mind you, finding a bunch of inspiring teachers in any field is no doubt a difficuly task. Cheers, Andrew
It was pulled because it was a fucking dupe. For once, an editor was actually doing his job, yet you still complain. Eh.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
can apply it, thye will get interested.
If you can show that skaterkid the principles, and then challenge him to figure out what he can do to increase his spin, he will apply it.
Give basics,
challenge student to apply it,
and watch them improve at what they like doing because if it.
Thats how to teach the basics to the intially disinterested.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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Explosions. Now those are way cool, and always made chemistry exciting. Then again, the explosions in chemistry class never had fallout associated with them.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Physicists are not looked up to in the United States because society has a backward view of the world. We look up to the shallowest people (collectively) in our society -- actors and athletes. We are more intersted in the outside appearance of peole than what they have inside. Until that attitude changes, there is nothing that is going to improve the image of physicists or any other group that requires hours of study...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Raving Lunatic Obviously Took Some Advanced Physics
STANFORD, CA--Known throughout the community for his verbal outbursts and his shopping cart full of trash, area street denizen "Cosmic Stan" must have studied advanced physics at some point, sources reported Monday.
[Photo Caption: Cosmic Stan asks for enough change to take a bus to the Riemannian manifolds.]
"Where's my cheese? Don't take my rowboat! Got no room!" the lunatic screamed from his regular spot near the Campus Drive bus stop. "I need space! Gimme space! Infinite dimensional separable Hilbert space!"
Though his rants seem nonsensical to most passersby, some astute listeners say they contain evidence of higher learning.
"I'd always see him around that bus stop, dressed in his ragged wool clothes, duct-taped shoes, and that plastic sheeting covered over with symbols drawn in magic-marker," Stanford Ph.D. candidate James Willard said. "Then, a few days ago, he was out there waving his tin-foil wand at random strangers, and I heard him yell, 'I demand that you buy me an ice-cream cone! My third-favorite flavor is strange! My second-favorite is top! My favorite flavor is anti-charmed!' Suddenly, I realized the guy was talking about quarks."
Willard said he spent the next several minutes listening to Cosmic Stan's rant.
"Mixed in with the usual stuff about CIA mind-control beams, talking dogs, and monkey-people, I heard him mention beta decay, instantons, density matrix, and subspaces of n-dimensional Riemannian manifolds," Willard said. "I'm not sure where he got it, but he definitely seems to have had extensive schooling in theoretical physics. Man, what could've happened to him?"
Stanford theoretical physicist Carl Lundergaard seconded Willard's theory on the loonball.
"He's definitely had some advanced training, though I'm not surprised that it went unnoticed for so long," Lundergaard said. "It's hard for the layperson to differentiate schizophrenic ramblings like 'Modernity chunk where the sink goes flying on the ping-pang' from legitimate terminology like 'Unstable equilibria lie on the nodal points of a separatrix in phase space.'"
Lundergaard said he first became intrigued by Cosmic Stan in December 1999, when the homeless man threw a chicken bone at him and said, "Components of the Weyl conformal curvature tensor." The professor said he initially suspected that Stan was repeating a phrase "from a textbook he'd found in the garbage." Then, several weeks later, the screaming nutcase shouted some things that indicated a strong grasp of high-level science.
"As I was buying coffee in the quad one morning, Stan came by waving those roller skates he sometimes wears on his hands," Lundergaard said. "I distinctly heard him say, 'I can't be in two places at once! I can't meddle in my own affairs! I can't destructively interfere with my own future plans! What do I look like--the uncollapsed wave function of an electron?' He was referring to the seemingly paradoxical aspects of wave/particle duality as illustrated by the 'two-slit' experiment in electron diffraction. Stan wasn't just mouthing phrases: The crazy homeless man knows his stuff."
Added Lundergaard: "I almost approached him the other day to see if he had any ideas regarding the general solution for the relativistic force-free equation describing the structure of the pulsar magnetosphere, but he was busy smearing a plastic doll with glue."
Cosmic Stan also appears to be versed in other academic subjects, Lundergaard said.
"He seems to have a working understanding of several of the higher maths, including Zurmelo-Fraenkel set theory, category theory, and algebraic topology," Lundergaard said. "He also seems to be quite interested in the subjects of religion, sexuality, fast-food restaurants, Ferdinand de Saussure, malevolent evil, '70s TV shows, and shadowy authority figures."
Lundergaard said he has no knowledge of Cosmic Stan's past, but theorizes that his nickname derives from the physic
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Three of my friends and I wanted to take pictures of exploding balloons. So, we built a circuit to trigger a flash (a strobe actually), and borrowed a camera. We got some amazing pictures out of it (http://www.benza.us/group4/. See second- and third-to-last), while at the same time ended up with extra credit we never intended on. We even ended up doing a short lesson on it.
To make physics cool, all you need are teachers who make it fun. When it's fun, it's cool.
Prior to the balloons, we made a potato cannon. Our next project is a ballistic pendulum...If that's not bringing cool and physics together, I don't know what is.
--<Mike>--
I guess they should add more interesting images and stories about scientists. Like the one about Newton blowing up his alchemy lab ^_^
:P )
:P, you could make it speak any phrase you'd like)...
:)
Or how about Einstein's tongue?
Or Lenna? (Lenna is a 70's playmate whose picture is widely used by image processing scientists. The image is cut JUST at the RIGHT point, so nothing "interesting" is seen
However, I think that the most critical part of science is HOW it's taught. Richard Feynman made an astonishing discovery on science being memorized and not taught (Excerpt from book: Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman).
I belonged to a scientific group in my school. (I'm talking about college). We had LOTS of funs making robots that actually walked (one was a crane-like biped robot), programming computer simulations (or making cool flashing lights with electronics), a talking program (you would train the program with your voice, and a few hours of manual labor later
And of course, just talking about science, of any topic that interested us. We even talked about religion - in a scientific way (WEIRD math ideas), fractals (fractal geomety of nature), chaos theory (remember Jurassic Park?), etc.
We were like the "deat poet society" of science. The LINDA group was pretty succesful, and we published some papers in international physics journals.
Perhaps making groups like this in your school would attract youngsters. Science, without the grades. Just for learning and fun
OK, now don't get me wrong, Physics is not an easy subject. It's great that people are working on it to make it more kid friendly.
However, I know many Physics majors that, even through the booming 90s, didn't graduate and go on to actually work for places they could apply their skills.
What kind of expectations do they give the kids they are showing this stuff to TODAY for jobs tomorrow?
Idiots who are desperate for everyone to love their interests for no reason should go study the art of dog crap disposal for ten years. Maybe throw in skateboarders or something.
"Dude, dog craps is da bomb!"
"Yeah! Physics rox too!"
"Watch me do the Lorentz contraction!"
If you've got nothing worth saying then nobody's gonna care no matter how you say it. Confounded pseudo-scientists.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Ya know, I got a bad feeling we're about to see a dog with sunglasses riding a skateboard rapping about sting theory.
Seriously, don't "jazz up" physics. Those that have an aptitude for it will be drawn towards it in the first place, and those that aren't interested in it obviously shouldn't.
Besides, us nerds know that Physics is cool. Cool like absolute zero mang!
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
I am particularly interested in the modern dance, thinking that this is probably a better approach of studying oscillations than the springs that I used when I was in college.
I can guarantee there are situational examples of spring oscillations that are FAR more interesting to high school/college students than modern dance. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the students interested in physics are typically the same students with little/no field experience with such oscillations.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
They should concentrate instead on getting better at teaching the material, esp. how to tackle, or maybe even just how to get started on, the problems. In freshman physics in our sessions with the TA, he would just berate us in frustration because we couldn't do any of the homework problems. The nature of it for me and my peers at the time was that we could understand the solutions to the example problems, with a little effort, but were then totally lost when it came to the problems we were supposed to do. It was like the example solved one was supposed to help us, but it didn't seem to have any apparent correlation. We needed to be taught better how to think in the needed ways, how to typically get started, and how to make that connection between what the samples were telling us and the homeworks (if there indeed was supposed to be any correlation), not just factoids out of a textbook and then you're on your own.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
Screw dance, I'm looking forward to this - http://www.aikido3d.com/ Motion captured Aikido with markers that show the connection between the human centers of gravity.
The next science (and innovation) powerhouse will be somewhere else, maybe Japan or Europe. How ironic if it was Germany again?
Yeah, right.
Gordon Freeman.
If he spoke...
Same reason Jesus wasn't born in Oz.
They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
I am particularly interested in the modern dance, thinking that this is probably a better approach of studying oscillations than the springs that I used when I was in college.
/self imagines the Micheal Flatley 'Lord of the Dance'-style in teaching physics. :-)
Springs, schmings. I always preferred to study oscillations at the local topless bar.
And now for a rant.... what's with /.'s anti-Social Science attitude? Frankly it reeks of elitism and the same kind of anti-intellectualism that many people approach science with: it's not cool. After all, Social Science deals with issues that are much more intrinisically meaningful than all the natural sciences do (eg "nature vs nature"). I'm sure that more people have fought and died in that debate than for any math equation in the world. I'm not dismissing Natural Sciences, just please make this kind of shit stop please.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
I'm working on my PhD, and teach. What has worked for me:
* Demos, demos, demos. The louder, brighter and more mysterious-seeming, the better.
* Some students are into technology, others are into cosmology and exotic topics. Draw connections between their lives and physics, esp. the possibilities stemming from new developments.
* Be very crisp in your own treatment, so the students see the beauty through complication.
You are not going to achieve social engineering through physics. The goal is to give bright students interested in science something to think about, and hopefully excite their imaginations if they are so inclined.
Ok guys this really stinks of a practical joke, hidden camera style?
Anything that involves a 'youth-driven ceremony' is a waste of time by someone who has absolutely no idea whats going on. Just listen to this song Einstein (not enough time) (im sorry for the bandwidth you're about to get surry uni) if you think im wrong. its definately in the C rap MC category.
"We want to show that physics is not about the stereotype of the mad scientist. Physicists are normal people doing normal things."
But thats exactly what appeals to people! no-one wants to be doing a boring normal job, people wan't blade-switches.
The reason physics has declined in this country, and I know, i've just been through uni, its because when people leave school they are shit scared that they are going to do a worthless degree where all the jobs are taken. If you want people to take up physics you have to proove to them that there are jobs out there that pay well and are worth atleast £10,000 debts at 21.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think many of you misunderstand their motives - they're not trying to lure in the "cool" kids.
When someone decides something is boring or difficult to learn, it is. This isn't just with high-school kids, 75% of my engineering class decided the mandatory programming course was boring, difficult and irrelevant. After a full four semesters of tuition, solely in Java, most of them couldn't write a simple program at all.
If you create a positive image of the subject, there's more chance the student will approach the material with an open mind, be more likely to learn, and like, and become a scientist.
... an f-ing makeover, because, you know, science is well served by people worrying about their popularity and image. It's all about faith, man, making people believe. I mean, if they don't that plane might crash because the engineer's couldn't mingle at parties. This computer might cease to function because the chip designers had trouble getting a date to the Jr High dance.
John Malashock of Twyla Tharp and then his own dance company started off studying physics and got into dancing as an application of physics.
Dead scientists society... that sounds cool :) Do you have pictures of that group btw?
"But, but... You can't do Physics without that REALLY hard math!"
;-) (I.e., Physics grads are awesome).
Yup, thus the reason Physics is on the "decline" (which I don't believe it is) is because it's now become a discipline that requires the brightest of us. Not everyone can get it, and those who do will go into it anyway 'cause I think it's a personality thing.
So for those who aren't the brightest, they will chose the "lesser" Physics of Chemistry, engineering, etc. And for those who do, then comes ANOTHER problem and why I don't believe it's on the decline: finding tenure.
Physics is not a gentlemen's leisure activity. It's a full time calling and you can't just do it while working as a patent clerk anymore. There needs to be more research positions, teaching positions, etc. and frankly, there just isn't enough to go around for the Physics majors who do brave all the hard work. They usually end up becoming SysAdmins or programmers and make the rest of us remember why we couldn't hack it in Physics.
So rather than trying to get more kids into Physics, we should spend more time making positions for our existing physics majors.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
I am particularly interested in the modern dance, thinking that this is probably a better approach of studying oscillations than the springs that I used when I was in college."
I'm a girl in science and comments like this certainly wouldn't have encouraged me. I mean, slashdot is full of these kinds of comments but at least they usually don't appear in the article main page summaries. Is slashdot legit enough that these kinds of main page comments are no longer acceptable? While I realize this comes from a submitter, can the editors be a bit more selective about what they put on the main pages. I mean, geek boys on slashdot moan about no girls and then make comments like this.
Ok, done ranting now. Go back to your quip comments, goats.ex links and regularily trolling.
I have a BS and a MS in Physics, and let me tell you, there was nothing "uncool" about studying it! We would stay up past midnight, solving equations, sharing tricks for integration, debating the Kirk v. Picard question, and then of course there were the physics groupies. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what a Michaelson Interferometer, an oscilloscope, and a few drinks can cause*, but I can tell you that it can go all night long! AOOOOUUUU!!
*data collection
I know a better way yet to study oscillations... Way better than modern dance...
Flying Circus of Physics
He was on PBS for a while - dressed like a John Belushi Samurai for impulse / momentum... Jumped into a vat of non-newtonian cornstarch solution (and then stumbled and watched slow flow engulf the front rows of the audience).
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Why do we need rap music when we already have a pop princess explaining frickin' lasers to us?
Icey Tea in hizzyouse smoking the pot, chillit GEEE.
I'd hate to thing that someone might decide that F=m+a simply because addition is less stressful than multiplication for the average kid's brain.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
But it seems a little fruitless. Physics is pretty heavy stuff and can easily broken down into examples from everyday life. But the real buzz gained from physics cannot really be enjoyed until you start to appreciate the fantastical that might be just around the corner. Transporter technology and replicator technology - while inspired from Trek - are already in the elementary stages of development. These and others are far better examples of physics than rap dancing or falling apples...
my thermodynamics class is still a pain in the ass.
They need to show what the Hawk-man's all about,
[In worst worst (British) west-country MC voice]
biggiting up with the MC, Steven Hawking, www dot mchawking dot com. A Brief History of Rhyme. DJ Doomsday, laying this shit down check it!
"My science is tight, rhymes faster than light, Like a ton of TNT I'm about to ignite" (E Equals MC Hawking)
With lines like that this is some of the best phyisics rap i've ever heard..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It's neat they're trying to make Physics more interesting for young students, but why are more and more kids being bored in science class? It's a shame that the better stuff in life has to compete with video games and television. Don't get me wrong, I'll play a 4 hour round of Doom 3 any day of the week, but maybe parents should let kids be distracted a little less? The Boy Scouts are fighting the same fight. Kids don't seem interested in learning how to lash logs together to build an awesome tower in the woods... Maybe I just like boring things...
-Mattman
http://OneBillion.blogspot.com
Not to sound pretensious, but the people who should know about these things will know about these things (taking away class,race disparities, etc). It took me getting into college to really appreciate it. I decided to try something new and leanred more about Calculas and Physics and learned to really appreciate it. I'm not certain it is something that people should be tricked into learning because it is cool. It is hard and requires time, thought and effort. Lets stop trying to trick people and let them choose their own paths and discover what is meant for them.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
For the first time in his life, the kid sees a point to his schooling. School still isn't cool (not by a long shot), but now it provides the means allowing him to accomplish his goals.
Show a kid the tests where they use speeding trains to test the structural integrity of toxic waste containers - by crashing the train into the container at 100kmh and seeing it derail and blow up.
:)
It seemed to work on me and the rest of my year 10 science class
Remember children, all generalizations are wrong.
...is to figure out how to get all the really boring teachers onto Mars. (I had one who, no kidding, handed out photocopies of the course textbook as lecture notes. The lectures involved a painful reading from said notes, with nothing added. Oh, and to add to the torture, he wore a really hideous polka-dot bow-tie.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It was always the real stuff, instead of beating around the bush or dulling it down, that got my attention. The real world is far more strange and exciting than any sci-fi has ever come up with.
As for the article, it's wrong. His teacher hated Einstein because Einstein was smarter than he was. And he didn't like Jews. That's why he "flunked" out. It's a very popular misperception that Einstein really wasn't very good at his school-work, but he had the same problem a lot of slashdotters had in school: the only people who score lower on competency tests than teachers are principals.
The best source of oscillations is a multivibrator, I always say...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
What makes a good teacher is one who can relate the theories to the student.
You can be brilliant... and still be a terrible teacher.The best teachers can take even the most abstract things and make students see why they need to understand it.
A good teacher can also decide how in depth is necessary for a student.
IMHO the best teachers I have had excelled in this. The worst lacked this skill.
Geek has become "chic" these days.
It'll come full circle in a few generations, but I expect there to be a new trend of "nerds" out there.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
First off, WORST. RAP. EVER.
Seriously, that's horrible. Any Casio-carrying crack-head could do better.
Second, Einstein flip? Um, last I checked, that is just a flip. Invented by Jose Yanez in about 1985 and performed in the novice class at contests these days. It's only exciting to the uninformed spectators anymore.
As for the education aspect, how about (GASP) making education a priority instead of sports? Schools in here (Texas) are built on football, not education.
How about having a zero-tolerence policy on picking on other (usually smarter) kids in school instead of waiting until they crack and threaten to gun down said bullies? Oh, BTW, they punish the victim and the bully is made into a celebrity if he survives.
What a way to completely waste money and ignore the problem.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
gordon freeman
I don't really know if it's Physics' image or the image in America. The one thing that struck me when I spent some time in Germany was that I suddenly realized why their so amazing at math and physics - everyone is bloody studying it. It got to the point that I was a bit surprised when someone _wasn't_ studying math or physics.
Just a different mentality. Everyone in America wants to go into Business. But everyone can't be in business - someone has to be creating the product behind it.
Is there any undergraduate institution in the US, or the world for that matter, that allows it students to graduate with any sort of degree with a 1.7 GPA?
*shudder*
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
Lots of states in the US are approving similar curricula. My father was part of the roll out of Active Physics® for a school in Virginia a few years ago. He's now leading a rollout for a district in Southern California. Essentially, for each lesson you take an observable phenomenon then beat the physics of it to death for a couple weeks as the students explore the concepts via lab exercises. The University of California even accepts this conceptual course as a college prep lab science for admissions purposes.
The more interesting change is the order in which the sciences are being taught in high school. Recognizing that biology and chemistry are really applied physics, this is slowly becoming conceptual physics (9th grade), chemistry (10th grade), biology (11th grade), then AP physics or narrower disciple as a science elective (12th grade).
Aren't physicists the last people you want attempting to make something "cool"? Isn't that the root of the problem?
Any chance Western culture had of retaining it's thousand of years legacy of science and the arts went out the door with television and the rise of post-modernism and consumer culture.
Is it really any surprise that the sciences and arts are all going out the window. After all, most of Western culture nowadays is anti-intellectual anyhow. Society rewards degenerate rappers on the television who can't speak coherent English and actors extolled as role models. Reality television actually gets watched! Who of these people will become a physicist despite the fact that we're on the brink of physics' new golden age?
With Hollywood churning out so many vacuous and innanely stupid movies, along with the mindless slop music industry, is it any wonder that kids would rather not go into jobs that afford them no respect or decent pay. Most of them wouldn't get the chance at a sufficient education to become a physicist anyhow even if they wanted it.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
I'm not that old (graduate physics student) but as I was growing up I remember doing such things like making homemade radios, mixing stuff in my chemistry set, and spending a lot of time catching and studying insects. Is it different these days? We had video games (I had an atari 2400? and then a NES) but I remember spending a lot of time doing other "productive" things. These days you hear that kids are obese and spend too much time watching tv, playing vid games, or surfing on the net. I don't think that many kids get chemistry, electronics kits, or whatever other kind of stimulation they need to keep the sense of wonder alive. IMO I think it's too late to try to get "most" people interested in physics when they're already in high school.
pay them more :)
There is nothing less cool than Modern Dance.
You want to be cool? Blow stuff up. All kids like blowing stuff up.
This comes to mind. When I was a Senior at Ridgeview High school In Bakersfield Ca, a Chemistry teacher at East High decided to ignite
"a few milliliters of methanol" in a GLASS bottle. This "experiment" (make science look kool, blow shit up)
is usually done in a plastic five gallon water bottle. Well, needless to say, he sent himself, and a few students to the hospital.
News Story
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
they never should have cancelled MacGyver.
Now we are all doomed.
You've obviously haven't seen the Britney Spear's guide to Semiconductor Physics.
Here: http://britneyspears.ac/physics/basics/basics.htm
This shows how quantum physics can be fun when "dressed up". Well, I guess geeks just want to look at Britney's pictures anyway ~
In America money is always cool. If we needed more physicists, they would commend high salaries and everyone would want to be a physicist. It's the American way.
I dunno, but it seems more likely the fact that genetics and pharmacology are getting funded up the yin-yang at the moment, while physics research isn't, might have something more to do with the declining enrolments than "coolness" factors.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I laughed out loud when your sentence construed that radio shack and MCDonalds are clothing stores.
... and that was the bicycle flip designed by the physicist. The rest of the stuff is sensless drivel that will only repel kids, who will see it as putting lipstick on a pig (this concept well described in other comments).
The good part is DOING SOMETHING and GETTING KIDS INVOLVED. I once saw an article on a math program where kids were presented with a problem and asked to solve it. Any method they wanted was fine, e.g, formulas, iteration, successive approximation, etc. Then they discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each method, i.e., whether it produced a good answer, was understandible, quick to use, etc. This was started out in grade school at the earliest levels, when they only had the most basic of tools.
I thought this was wonderful, as it is exactly the way math is done at the edges of research. No one tells the researcher to solve the problem with method X, (s)he just has a goal, a toolbox, and a blank sheet of paper.
Unfortunately, this was years ago, and I've seen nothing of it since. Yet, every successful math or science program I've seen involves the kids in the real experience of measuring, quantifying and predicting stuff they liked, i.e., real science, not some rote memorization process. If they have a goal, then they have the motivation to overcome the obstacles.
Without direct involvement, it is just some dumb teacher handing out meaningless tedious assignments. Of course the teachers' union will never acknowledge that some teachers will utterly ruin their students' chances of learning. but that is a topic for another day.
"Bicycle stunts, rap music and modern dance"
maybe in the name of Newton.
I didn't think Einsteinian passtimes are possible without infinite energy.
IANAP
Note to real physicists - this was a j-o-k-e
Kids are taught the abstraction of functions in f(t) when the world is more logically understood in f(s).
The time domain was charted mathematically first, but it is far more abstract than the frequency domain. An equation in f(t) is a fantasy because no one will be around at infinite time, and noone was around at -infinity time. But for frequency everyone can hear a frequency.
Music is very easy for some people.
If you sit a kid in front of piano at a very early age then music will be very easy for that child.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-Ernest Rutherford
Who, ironically won the Nobel prize in 1908 for... chemistry.
this sig has been rated E for Everyone.
The result is very instructive, and covers a HUGE range of topics, including conservation of Warren Sapp's momentum when he hits Doug Flutie! He discusses the flight of a thrown or kicked "oblong spheroid," and even does some statistical analysis of how likely a fan is to participate in "the wave" as it moves through a stadium (or attempts to).
As one of the reviewers on Amazon.com states, "If Timothy Gay doesn't rewrite this book into a high school level physics text he's really missing a bet." I couldn't agree more.
Tim
That was the prevailing feeling at my school.
Physics is not hard at all as long as you do the work and study the math. How could it be hard as it is all based upon observable phenomena.
what is hard is how self-important so many physics majors are.
what is very hard is how so many physicists have an entitlement mentality and want to waste billions to figure out about states of matter that may never have existed.
If we teach children math in a more reasonable way then we will have a better chance of getting them interested in science.
I find it interesting how totally out of touch physicists were concerning Chaos theory. It took Meteorologists doing descrete mathematics to come up with the basic idea that there are no ideal systems. Add energy, and eventually the system explodes. Physicists, blinded by the math, would say "under ideal conditions". . . blah blah blah.
The conditions were ideal, it was the physicists who were blinded, like the dark ages clerics, by their own sense of self-importance.
Oh how about chemists totally missing the concept of fullerines. I don't believe that Mr. Buckminster Fuller had a Doctorate, and yet he came up with the design of the fullerine before anyone concieved that this could be done with carbon atoms. Now we have the field of nanotechnology. Physicists and Chemists must have been asleep at the switch.
What else are they just failing to see? What else are they totally wrong about? They want to be so important, but often they are like trolls begging for grant money. Or patent mongering aholes nested at MIT with their tenure and their small idea that they say that they own.
It makes me sick.
the problem that a lot of physicists have is that they confuse the equation for the actual thing. That is why they totally missed the boat on Chaos theory.
The equation is a description of something. The math is NOT the physics. It is a model. When you confuse this you are blinded by your own cleverness.
The kids of nowdays wear the latest fashions but have no idea what they are made of? Unthinkable, given the "Public Schools" persistence on insisting that their students achieve the absolute basics to gaining cognitive ability.
What is the Country of origin to this article? Certainly not the "Undisputed Standard of Academia", the USA". Must be the USA ((Uninformed Stupid Asses)?????).
Any Questions?
the guy that made physics/science fun for me was Tom Lehrer. So heres something he did related to physics
I thought they were trying to bring more people into physics!
Since when is physics uncool? When I was in school, I wasn't a jock, but I wasn't a geek either and physics was cool because it is science where you actually get to "do" something. Physics allowed me to blow stuff up for school credit. What's cooler than chaos for credit?
"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." - Sir Arthur Eddington
Egad, this guy's figured out quantum mechanics!
Speaking of the improbable...
My high school physics teacher insisted one of us demonstrate the bed of nails.
Not a problem to me, except when I crab-walked over the thing the bell rang, adding urgency.
I shoved seven nails into my palm and wrist when I missed the floor and hit the exhibit.
The pain and surprise caused me to leap away from the danger.
How I managed to land on the floor is still a mystery.
What if I had landed (partially) on the nails?
Shudder.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Some report says we do, someone points out graduates can't get jobs. The reconcilation is that WE DO need more scientists, and the fact that the system doesn't produce more is because the system is fscked.
For example , for those who are money oriented, look to see lawyering as MUCH more lucrative. Yet , it produces NOTHING; it's purely a move-around-wealth job, it creates no new wealth. likewise many jobs. Somehow , people think if the person makes MONEY they are helping, they are a sucess. But have they created any wealth?
Those who go into science tend to be those who LOVE it. But the job situation doesn't make it any easier.
We NEED the scientists, AND there are no jobs. Because the system is whack.
Hope that explains it.
You could have learned more in school, because you were a dork with the capacity for it. I'm still a bit tweaked that I didn't learn more math in high school, because I gobbled up everything they taught me and there was nothing left.
You can learn same as you ever could, you just don't have someone imprisoning you in a McGulag for eight hours a day. (Well, depending on where you work...) It's a cheap excuse.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
How about dumping all those damn symbols and using *gasp* NAMES for your variables? Like, instead of writing a curly E-like thing, you could say "voltage". It's not so bad that to remember that curly E means EMF which means ElectroMotivceForce which of course isn't actually force at all it's actually just friggin' voltage, but it just goes on and on and on and on. "Q" for charge? "I" for current? Extra-curvy "w" somehow means angular momentum, eh? You have to spend half a page of the textbook telling us which 'e' this is anyway, so why not just write it out? "charge_of_electron".
If you can memorize all that silliness most of physics is pretty simple. I'm convinced that this is a case of physicists trying to ensure 'job security'.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
TRUE STORY, happened in Michigan (my electromagnetism professor told me this one).
My professor, who actually was a researcher for Dow and taught on the side, was giving some kind of talk at a local high school. He had some time to kill, and was waiting in the hallway, when he saw some obviously nerdy kids wheeling a huge cart covered with subwoofers and electronics into the hall. They looked around, he ducked into a doorway so they wouldn't see him, and they felt comfortable. So they pointed the subwoofers down the hall at the office, a couple dozen yards away.
They started fiddling with the knobs on their devices, and although my prof couldn't actually HEAR anything, the huge panes of glass in the office started to softly vibrate and shake. "Yeah, that's it! Yeah!" one of the kids said, and they turned up the power a little. The glass started to noticably wobble around. Just then, one of the kids noticed my prof, who was dying of curiosity at this point. They hustled down the hall and disappeared, and he went to give his talk.
He regretted not asking the kids what was going on, still curious, and maybe because he was thinking about it, he noticed an article in the newspaper a few days later.
Every window in the high school had been busted out, with the only clue to what happened being a white van had been driving around the neighborhood for a few hours around the same time the windows broke.
My prof said, the only thing he can figure is they were using very low frequency sound. It's one of the coolest stories anyone has ever told me.
I've thought Physics was awesome and cool ever since. So if you want to show people how cool Physics can be, why not show them how much fun you can have with it? I mean, really.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
... to welcome our new physics dorks^H^H^H^H^Hoverlords.
Entertainment is intellectually unstimulating? Smart people are treated with contempt? People sometimes choose to squander their potential rather than live up to it? THE SKY IS FALLING! SOCIETY IS CRUMBLING!
Society is comprised largely of peasants. These days they're not farming, but that's beside the point. Reality television and mindless consumerism have replaced petty superstition as the pastime of the proletariat.
This does not signal the end of the world.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
While I applaud the effort, that report is behind the times. Many groups (including The Geek Group) have been using this approach to teach physics, and many other physical sciences, for years.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
... I just think you're the first person who would own up to being dorky enough to know how to spell it right.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
As being a teenage geek with a skateboard, I find that skateboarding tricks are the pinacle of kinetic physics,
You'd be surprised at how a kickflip works when you think about it.
I find it funny that Mr. Feynman got that conclusion. From my own experiences, which are limited high-school, the schools that force the content through memorization are the american schools, while the brazilian ones put emphasis on making the (unwilingly) kids learn (for the college entrance tests, and no more, but that's a different discussion).
In the school I went to, some teachers would even be angry if you asked them a relevant but not in the book question. (Ms James and Mrs Hicks come to my mind. Ignorance breeds ignorance.) Ridiculous.
It just isn't as simple as "scientists good", "lawyers bad". There are saintly lawyers and charlatan scientists. Science is a high risk, high return activity largely paid for by taxation. You assert that we need more scientists but can you marshall arguments that will convinice your fellow citizens to pony up the bucks?
Physics has a LOT of cool factor. The whole hacker crowd of computers used to be unified with the physics crowd early 80s.
Physics itself is very cool, people only dont join because the cold war is over and there arent too many obvious physicist jobs out there. Most guys find something technical cool. All technical things are eventually a part of physics itself.... but theres something else....
If you go beyond the 'boring' linear local physics of Newton... you'll see Quantum Physics. Teach the basics of Quantum physics, using Feynman's text or videos to any teenage kid, and youve got him hooked. Any reality that doesnt make sense is cool. Any reality that cannot and should not be imagined, and dealt with only through mathematics, is cool. Think Matrix the movie. Think of many other sci fi movies with basis in higher physics theories like the many worlds theory.... so much of 20th century's technologies are based on this kind of physics which really 'doesnt make sense'. Explain 4 dimensions, then 26 dimensions, and finally a hilbert space to anyone and youve entered philosophy.
Making any subject cool by infiltrating street culture and other coolfactor stuff in peoples lives always backfires. You always attract the wrong people, who will leave and the reputation of the subject grows worse.
Leave Physics as an elitist subject and only the brightest minds will be attracted. Another idea is to get pretty scientists like that italian girl at Waterloos Perimeter Institute whatshername?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Your math teacher is an excellent example
:\
of why teaching out of a book with out at
least some hands on experience can cause kids to
not only NOT learn the subject, but to shun it.
I got very interested in computers, at
a young age, NOT because someone with a text
book started yammering on about variables
and pointers, but because I saw them in
action, played with them, and immediately
thought "SHIT, this is fun!". I just wonder
how many kids were doomed to medeocrity because
they were scared away from a subject that
they would otherwise be interssted in.
We coincidentally did a lab with oscellations today at my college, and we used a length of elastic cord that had some sort of vibration device, a sound amplifier, and a frequency/amplitude/etc changer attached to it. Seemed pretty cool, to see the elastic cord vibrate at high speeds that actually resembled a number of sin waves. I'd much rather prefer it over dancing, lol.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
The proletariat be damned. The problem is however that the intellegentia are falling apart.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Play with radioactive stuff? Why not drink it! Oh, yeah, I remember the days when radioactive stuff was cool, trendy and good for you. On the other hand, it has been many years since then, but as far as I remember physics has never been "uncool" for me. Though apparently I was "uncool" for the bullies, but that's another story. And since I read the Sex Tips For Geeks by Eric S. Raymond I believe that I am not only cool, but actually quite a hot stud if you ask me. All in all, a very interesting article, but in my opinion it should pay more attention to social problems that the most intelligent kids face these days, as unfortunately many of us know from experience.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Me too. I believe we both need to go out more often.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
"And here we have an equation for loss of interest in the subject over time"
(...ZZZzzz...)
How many high paid jobs are their in physics? For the amount of work a student has to do to get a degree, phD, they can study Law, Medicine, Dentistry or Accountancy - all far higher paying jobs. Face it, it is un-economic for an American student to study physics
My friend has just made a potato cannon. Myself, I'm trying to make a railgun. I love A-level physics. You don't happen to have any spare high voltage capacitors, do you?
I am trolling
Daria: Butt-head, why don't you try this
experiment? Analyze the friction caused by digitally oscillating your weiner.
[Beavis and Butt-head laugh]
Butt-head: That was cool!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
A quick fix to your post:
$post =~ s/Western/American/g
It's Geordi LaForge, not Jordi!!! Heathen!!!
We should use Britney Spears physics sites to popularize physics. This one supposedly get tons of hits. http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
If rap music doesn't already insult their intelligence, you really wouldn't want them studying physics. "Uhu, Einsteins, uh, emcee 2, energy yo." Compelling.
Physics isn't uncool! I love studying physics related stuff. It's the Physics professors that you get stuck with in undergrad level physics courses that are so uncool! Having transferred through 3 different schools now, and having gotten a D in every entry-level physics class so far (due to my severe dislike of the professors which only fuels my desire to completely slack off in the classes), I have had to retake Physics 101 three times now. I know, that appears to not support the fact that I enjoy Physics, but I really do. I just have a real problem doing the work when the professor is pissing me off so badly.
Let's see, here's how my physics prof's broke down:
Physics prof. #1: A dweeb. Seemingly could not remove his elbows from the sides of his corpulent belly. Subsequently, this made him look like a retarded Tyranosauros Rex when he had to jump to pull down the overhead screen that time that the overhead screen pull cord was stuck up high and he couldn't reach it. Also talked slowly, monotonously, and had this really weird dweeby voice. Couldn't understand how to relate to the students when they asked a question.
Physics prof. #2: Not so bad, but not so good. Spoke over everyone's heads, didn't know how to relate to those he was trying to teach. An elitist.
Physics prof. #3: What an ass! Talks slowly, is tough on the eyes (looks like a hard alcoholic (red face) GNU hippie that isn't as fat as a GNU hippie, but seemingly has the same personal grooming habits as one). Gets upset when students ask questions. Repeats himself 5+ times about everything and likes to not always finish sentences when speaking. I seriously would have had the lab done in under 30 minutes last night if he would've just given us the info and sent us to lab instead of droning on and on. (I was there for 1.5hrs)
So you see, the biggest problem is social ineptitude on the part of Physics professors at the undergrad level, not a lack of "coolness" on the subject of Physics.
my physics teacher is already addapting physics to class interests.
when we were doing kinetmatics (study of motion), we studied the physics of football and skateboarding.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The average physicist salary was $87,000 in 2003. No high tech dip here.
As is usually the case, my fingers worked much faster than my brain, and I typed the wrong book title. The actual title is "Football Physics: The Science of the Game."
The link to Amazon is correct.
Tim
To me, it was always the complex math required to do Physics that made it geeky and "unphun".
What kid hasn't heard of Black holes, quasars, neutrinos, quarks, radioactivity? I can't even count how many cartoons make some mention or other about these things, and it's almost always played off as cool. I don't know many kids that don't have some sort of interest learning about what they are or how they work.
What really needs to happen in order to produce more physicists is a greater interest in mathematics. The extent of what most kids know about math is that "it's hard." The few kids do like math only really are interested in studying it because it's something else everyone else seemingly can't. Kids who aren't doing well in math (and even those that are) need to be shown why math is "cool" so that they will have the desire to learn the skills needed to study physics.
Increasing the general understanding of the natural world can only be a good thing, but I don't see it as being extremely important. People will still be almost completely reliant on expert opinion when forming opinions on issues that require some technical understanding. As far as training future scientists, and especially future physicists, they have enough aptitude to be excited about the logical structure of the theory and the scientific method by which theory is extended by testing against experiment. I'd be aiming very high, in terms of the level of aptitude and interest of the audience, in any educational effort. ( Are we sure Big Bro' really WANTS to advance phyiscs and physics understanding, in the unclassified world, as rapidly as possible? Maybe introducing 'rap into phyiscs education is a way to dumb it down. )
Very amusing. It sounds like one of the Onion's inspirations must have been the first scientist guy from Timeline who shows up wandering around the desert with lots of transcription errors. Knows a lot, but can't say anything coherent.
Australia's going the same way too.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
From the article: "We want to show that physics is not about the stereotype of the mad scientist. Physicists are normal people doing normal things."
I always thought mad scientists were a damn sight cooler than normal people doing normal things...
If they really want to make physics cool, they should invent the Gravity Gun :-)
This sig is false.
Are they really? They don't go around referencing ancient greek writers as much as they used to, or pretending to enjoy opera. That just means that the intelligentsia aren't snobs to the same degree that they once were.
So how is the intellectual class of society falling apart? What has been lost in our era relative to those ages past that you seem to long for? Are you sure you're not just nostalgic for something that never existed? Or bitter that you'd fit in better with the social climate of some previous decade?
Nix absolutably seriousness.
Well it's not so much a matter of snobbery but that the intellegentia no longer participate in education or social debate and little to no social relevance. Western education, science and art have become completely alienated from popular culture. People are merely indoctrinated into working for companies and have no intellectual self reliance whatsoever, no real education, little literacy and no discernible intellectual skills. People are not able to think critically or appraise arguements, so political discussion for example is reduced to whether people look trustworthy or not. Western culture has become a thing of surface appearances. Truth is measured by whether the person wears an expensive suit or not.
We live in an entertainment age where common sense and thinking about things is seen as uncool. Nobody goes to art galleries, hardly anybody reads and those that do read populist trash. The amazing discoveries of Science occuring as we speak are irrelevant to a population that mostly believes in fundamantalist Christianity, indifference and blind ignorance. People believe what suits them and can't even appraise facts.
What's even more worrying however is the previllance of anti-intellectualism. It's become fashionable to equate intellectual pursuits with snobbery. High Art is seens as completely useless, and Science is seen as being a way to stigmatise yourself in society.
The media has portrayed intellectuals so poorly, that people are only capable of rehashing cliched stereotypes that they've learned from television. Western Culture is viewed as you've illustrated all so clearly, as being some sort of nostalgic illusion of the past.
It's a hell of a lot worse than opera. The average American for instance doesn't understand things like the Geneva Convention or the United Nations - so their politicians (on either side) are free to do as they please regardless of international law and treaty. It's deliberate ignorance, used to keep people in their place, and it's certainly nothing to brag about or take pride in.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
You say that western education, science, and art have become completely alienated from popular culture, but for that to be true, they would have had to be a part of it at some point. I challenge you to show me historical evidence of an era when a majority of common men were critical thinkers. Show me an era where common people studied science or the arts. A large majority of people have always been, and always will be, ignorant in most ways. Sheep has always existed: politicians have always been liars and people have always been easily manipulated by them.
The fact that people don't understand what's going on in the world is nothing new. Likewise, the fact that, when you tell them what's going on, they don't care, is nothing surprising. If people are wealthy and happy in their own little lives, they're just not going to care about larger issues. Contentment breeds apathy.
But we said earlier that we aren't talking about the unwashed masses, we're talking about the intelligentsia and its supposed decline. Well, the intellectual climate has changed, and the arts are indeed seen as less important than science. Changing interests are nothing new. I know nothing about fine art, opera, or ancient greek philosophers. On the other hand, all those 1920s Ivy League graduates probably knew next to nothing about electric motors. Scientific pursuits have become the playground of the intellectual class because science is just more relevant and more interesting to more people. It's a shift in the politics of education and knowledge, not the end of the world.
I think the shift is for the better. People today focus on trying to understand their world through science and perhaps apply that knowledge in a useful way. I'd say that compares favourably to studying dead languages and the philosophical musings of long-gone cultures.
If there's a difference between the current and past forms of our society, it's that the unwashed masses have attained a high level of wealth and therefore influence. Entertainment panders to them because they're the largest market, and that's what you're seeing as the supposed decline of society. Perhaps it can also be said that men do not strive to better themselves as much as they once did, but this is largely because their comfortable lives provide little incentive for them to do so. The anti-intellectualism you cite is to be expected: no one likes people smarter or wealthier than them. People have always hated the intellectual class; today, their contempt is a lot more visible.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
It would take me a long time to explain to you my views on the decline of the intellegentia and the arts and Science in general, but if you're interested, there's a good outline of it in "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto. Another of his books is online here in it's entirety and addresses much the same subject.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Thanks for the link. I'm about two chapters into that book right now. So far, it's been interesting reading, though I certainly have criticisms of Gatto's interpretation of history.
:)
For one, he uses George Washington and Ben Franklin as examples of what people were like in the 18th century. You couldn't possibly pick two more extreme outliers. The fact that they were so successful in private and public life suggests something inherently extraordinary about such people, humble origins or not. There are some who, by the strength of their character and on the skill of their natural ability, are virtually certain to rise to some measure of success. In his introduction, he mentions that he doesn't believe in the bell curve, so perhaps his point is that we are all capable of such things. Being two chapters into the book, I'm open to the possibility that he'll elaborate on this some more.
He also makes some claims that are, to me, extraordinary; for example, the nearly complete literacy of the 18th century colonial American population.
Reading on as he makes his points about how the education system is designed to produce a large mass of people unable to make descisions or function in society, and I'm not sure I buy it. On one hand, I imagine a faceless mass of sheep, brutally ignorant, and it all makes sense. On the other hand, I think of my experiences in school, and I just can't see how the education system ever forced stupidity upon anyone. On the third hand, assuming we have some extra appendages, I never found school the least bit challenging or, for that matter, intellectually stimulating. Perhaps, then, its crime is wasting energetic youth on pointless, mundane, and unchallenging things. But then, why did I find it so easy while those around me struggled with it? Why were they unable to meet even the undemanding requirements of public schooling? What element of the educational system made them THAT stupid? I can't recall anything in my schooling that ever encouraged, directly or indirectly, the failure to meet its requirements.
I'm just randomly bringing up a few points from the book you linked... the questions are largely rhetorical... I just wanted to point out that John Taylor Gatto isn't above criticism, and his book is just a collection of his ideas.
You've made me think - or, well, you've linked me to a book that's made me think... So, thanks.
But, bringing this back to the issue we were actually discussing: whatever the problems with education, I still don't think that they have anything to do with the failure to study classical works or ancient history. Maybe that's a symptom of a larger problem, but whatever can be learned from those fields of study can be taught in a more direct manner through less tortorous means. But then, maybe teaching kids the lesson instead of having them figure it out for themselves is precisely the problem...
So many digressions, so little time.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
I'm glad you are enjoying the book. I'd like to continue chatting with you on this later, but can't quite at the moment. My journal explains why. Look forward to continuing this chat soon.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
First of all, I'm an extremely antisocial nerd, have had skin problems for ages (nothing I can do anything about, unfortunately), and I do indeed sit around all day playing rpgs and masturbating to porn (hentai, no less).
I'm also a female and never seem to have trouble finding a boyfriend. Admittedly I usually (but not always) have fellow geeks after me, but that's mainly because the average jock can't handle the idea of dating a girl who refuses to act like an aspiring housewife, let alone one who can code circles around him. Y'see, I'm not ashamed of my intelligence or my interests. I don't -look- like the stereotypical geek -- I'm fairly tall and slim, plus I'm currently wearing a knee-length skirt, tall striped socks, and even a thong, so not the kind of outfit one would expect a geek of either gender to wear (although I do periodically complete such an outfit with a thinkgeek shirt) -- but anyone who talks to me will quickly see through my pseudo-normal appearance. Of course, I still generally don't get invited to "normal" parties, but that's only because I show no interest in them. I'd prefer a good old fashioned LAN party any day.
Oh, and my current boyfriend is a 4th year computer science student who even has a job lined up for him at EA when he graduates... and dispite the multiple shelves of RPG books in his room, his history of mudding and playing other rpgs online (WoW, CoH, etc.), and other undeniably geeky characteristics, he's never had trouble getting laid either.
"A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name" - Evan Esar (1899-1995)
http://www.cafepress.com/math_shirts.16745635
"Einstein is my Homie"