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From: Al in St. Lou on 2 Apr 2010 20:03
On Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:31:40 -0400, Tak To <takto(a)alum.mit.eduxx>
wrote:

>Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
>> Tak To <takto(a)alum.mit.eduxx> writes:
>>
>>> Btw, I find the arrangement of the typical US high school
>>> curriculum, in which biology ("life science"), chemistry and physics
>>> were divided into separate years of study totally insane. Why not
>>> study a little bit of everything each year?
>>
>> That's what we do before high school. In high school separating them
>> both allows them to be studied in greater depth and allows you to have
>> teachers who specialize. I'd opine that to study biology in any depth
>> you need to have a fair grounding in chemistry. And to study physics
>> in any real depth requires at least some calculus. At my high school,
>> the track for those of us with mathematical and scientific aptitude
>> started with a year of non-calculus physics, then proceeded to
>> chemistry, and biology, finally finishing up with a second year of the
>> one or two subjects you had the most interest in (I chose biology and
>> physics--this time with calculus).
>
>Here in NJ it is usually Biology, Chemistry, Physics
>There are more advanced versions with "Honors" etc in
>the name and less advanced versions with "Concepts"
>etc in the name. And then there are "AP" courses
>depending on the school district. In any case, the
>general sequence is still B-C-P.
>
>I don't know what you have in mind about more advanced
>biology that requires a "chemistry grounding". As high
>school subjects of study, both biology and chemistry
>are essentially compilations of facts. In chemistry
>we can do some "chemical arithmetic" or touch on how
>the configuration of electronic orbitals/electronegativity
>affects the chemical property of an element, but that's
>about all that one can do. Biology has even less theories
>to study. The trick is to make these facts interesting
>to students, and I think spreading them into different
>years helps.
>
>Likewise, there are topics in physics that require
>complex mathematics and there are topics that require
>only simple arithmetic. No harm in spreading them
>either over different years either.
>
>>> Ditto for the division of mathematics courses. An entire year of
>>> "Geometry" sandwiched between "Algebra I" and "Algebra II"? Absurd!
>>
>> The point of geometry isn't really to teach geometry. It's to teach
>> formal proof.
>
>Absolutely; as well as the beauty of mathematics.
>All the more reasons to do it more thoroughly. The
>students have to be very familiar with the concepts
>before they can reach their own "aha!" moments.
>
>> The first year of algebra is to teach how to think of
>> things in terms of variables and equations.
>
>Yes, and it is NOT a prerequisite of learning
>geometry.
>
>> And even when I was in
>> school, again for those of us with some mathematical aptitude, our
>> year of algebra was before we hit high school. My high school track
>> was geometry, trigonometry, analytic geometry, calculus. My son's
>> been getting algebra-ish basics since about third grade (way before we
>> did in class) and I believe that he gets it formally next year in
>> seventh grade, a year before I did, and so he'll probably be through
>> geometry before he hits high school.
>
>The sequence in NJ nowadays is roughly Algebra I, Geometry,
>Algebra II, Math Analysis (Trigonometry, Analytic Geometry,
>Limits, etc) and Calculus. As usual there are the "Honors",
>"Concepts", "AP", etc variations.

Except for the "Concepts" and "AP" versions, you've described what I
experienced in NJ in the '70s.

Plus �a change et plus c'est pareil.

--
Al in St. Lou
From: Brian M. Scott on 2 Apr 2010 23:42
On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:35:38 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum(a)hpl.hp.com> wrote in
<news:y6h5byn9.fsf(a)hpl.hp.com> in
sci.lang,alt.usage.english,sci.physics:

> Hatunen <hatunen(a)cox.net> writes:

>> [*] TWIAVBP: In American universities sunjects are rated by the
>> number of weekly hours they meet. A class that meets three times
>> a week for one hour each is a three credit class. So is one that
>> meets 90 minutes twice a week. And I've had a few that simply met
>> once a week for three hours. That explanation is a bit
>> simplistic, but it gives the general iedea.

> If only it were that simple. At Stanford, the standard courseload was
> 15-18 units. (You had to petition for more than 20 and you went on
> probation with fewer than 12.) The number of units a class was worth
> depended primarily on how many classes the department thought you
> should be taking at once. If they thought their students should take
> three classes a quarter, it would be a 5-unit class. If they wanted
> you to take four a quarter, it would be a 4-unit class. If five, a
> 3-unit class.

And Pomona simply counted courses: a full load was four
courses, and 32 courses (suitably distributed) were required
for graduation.

Brian
From: Hatunen on 3 Apr 2010 11:57
On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 19:32:33 +1100, Peter Moylan
<gro.nalyomp(a)retep> wrote:

>Hatunen wrote:
>
>> Before my senior year in college I realized that I could graduate
>> the following June if I took all physics courses the first
>> semester of the year, so I signed up for 21 hours [*]. Later I
>> was asked how difficult it was. I replied that it was actually
>> quite easy. In each class I simply learned another way to solve
>> the Laplacian equation; it was more like taking about a third of
>> hte class load.
>
>It's interesting that your use of the word "college", in combination
>with other posts in this thread, made me think that you were talking
>about high school. It wasn't until I got to the word "Laplacian" that I
>realised that you were writing about something more advanced.

We already went through this Americanism in another thread or
sub-thread, whereby in American English "college" is the almost
universal word for any post-secondary school.



--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen(a)cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
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