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from the the-scientists-of-tomorrow-are-thwarted dept.
According to a petition at change.org
At first glance, Greg Schiller looks like a mad scientist taken straight out of a Hollywood film. His infamous moustache has more fans and followers than the dodgers on a good day. He coaches fencing and occasionally appears in school talent shows. Heck! Mr. Schiller is in fact anything but ordinary. He is teacher, role model and friend.
He is also suspended from teaching, coaching, and acting as union rep for his school.
Schiller was ordered to report daily to a district administrative office pending an investigation after two students turned in science-fair projects that were designed to shoot small projectiles.
One project used compressed air to propel a small object but it was not connected to a source of air pressure, so it could not have been fired. (In 2012, President Obama tried out a more powerful air-pressure device at a White House Science Fair that could launch a marshmallow 175 feet.)
Another project used the power from an AA battery to charge a tube surrounded by a coil. When the ninth-grader proposed it, Schiller told him to be more scientific, to construct and test different coils and to draw graphs and conduct additional analysis, said his parents, who also are Los Angeles teachers.
A school employee saw the air-pressure project and raised concerns about what looked to her like a weapon, according to the teachers union and supporters.
Shooting objects through tubes has a long tradition, and the idea of moving things with coils has been around a long time (I dimly recall articles about coast-to-coast coil trains from old mouldy Popular Science mags).
If you support freedom of scientific thought in our schools you might want to stop by change.org and sign the petition.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kell on Friday April 11 2014, @06:15AM
I disagree. A project in which the student analyses the coil field, conducts calculations of expected resulting velocity for a given input current and then measures the velocity to compare against predictions... sounds like science project to me. Theory, methodology, experiments, discussion. It might not be 'advanced' or 'hard' by your definition but not every student is capable of building fusors in their basement, either. The best science project is a well-scoped, achievable task that stretches the student's thinking abilities without breaking - the goal of a science class is to teach science, not to do cutting-edge physics experiments.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @06:36AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @07:41AM
Sorry, were you trying to make a point?
(Score: 1) by thoughtlover on Sunday April 13 2014, @07:33PM
- the goal of a science class is to teach science, not to do cutting-edge physics experiments.
That goal you mention (learning, I assume) is aided and enhanced by students actually performing physical experiments. That a certain experiment seems 'cutting-edge' may indicate your overall age (no offense).
Back in the 80s, no one I knew in my high school was aware of things like the Lorenz Force. New scientific concepts are taught at a much younger age simply because we can learn them. What, you think Wesley Crusher will be taught the same curriculum at age 8 that Joe Shmo was taught in 1999? I don't think so.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday April 14 2014, @06:53AM
Hi Thoughtlover, thanks for your comment, although I think perhaps you misunderstood me. The GGP (edIII) argued that the student's project was basic and lazy. My assertion is that lots of good science learning can be done with basic physics (eg. kinematic pendulum experiments, buoyancy calculations) without needing to be situated right on the bleeding edge of modern understanding. A coil gun using EMF can be a very enlightening exercise when the scientific method is applied and followed; just because something is well-understood doesn't mean it's not an effective teaching tool. Science education (at the high school level) isn't about teaching students about the latest and greatest breakthroughs in high-energy physics - it's great if the students are engaged and passionate for the frontiers, but it isn't what the class is all about. Rather, the aim is to expose students to logical, methodological thinking and building the basic understanding of science principles to prepare them for university education where they will be taken to the frontier.
The reason advanced science concepts are taught earlier is because society recognises the need to deliver more science content for college prep, and the value to students in doing so. Also, as cutting-edge fields are more understood, the necessary understanding is developed to enable more sophisticated concepts to be communicated more easily. It's difficult to teach things that you yourself don't have mastery of! It's not that students are getting better, per se, but rather that our ability to explain improves.
Also, students are staying in school much longer than ever before - some for as much as a third of their expected life span! In some fields (eg. medicine, advanced engineering) so much time is needed in training and experience that the effective working life of a top-level practitioner may be only 20 years (compared to ~50 years for an unskilled labourer). Alas, it seems unlikely that our descendents will master nuclear engineering while still in their teens, no matter how good we get at explaining things. So long as humans remain human, there is a limit to how much, how fast, a person can learn.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.