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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: 2) by Covalent on Friday April 11 2014, @12:55PM
It's definitely worthwhile to get to know your local school board and to be involved with your child's school. My neighborhood organized to vote out a member of our school board who was not only a complete moron, but who sent his three school-age children to a private school after the district rezoned his neighborhood to a school he didn't like...in the district he worked for. Sheesh.
That said, probably no one who has posted a comment here lives in LA. For these people, there is no way for them to participate in the clearly warranted outcry except something like change.org If it's one thing that school districts DON'T want, it's bad publicity. If enough people get on this band wagon, perhaps enough bad press will force the school district to turn their brains back on. I know, it's unlikely, but maybe...
FWIW, I'm a high school physics teacher, and I have had my students building "launchers" of various types for 15 years. Students have launched eggs, golf balls, marshmallows, marbles, you name it. I sympathize immensely with this teacher.
Oh, and check this out: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/rtqphysic s.pdf [ca.gov] (go to page 9...first question)
For those too lazy to read it, this is a California Standards Test in Physics in which students are asked how to analyze data from the angle and distance data of a "spring gun".
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.