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Knowledge at the Crossroads?: Physics and History in the Changing World of Schools and Universities
There is much discussion about what needs to change in education institutions in the 21st century, but less attention given to how core disciplinary studies should be considered within that context. This book is based on a major 4-year research study of history and physics in the changing environment of schools and universities in Australia. Are these forms of knowledge still valuable for students? Are they complementary to, or at odds with the concerns about ‘21st century skills’, interdisciplinary and collaborative research teams, employability and ‘learner-centred’ education? How do those who work in these fields see changes in their disciplines and in their work environment? And what are the similarities and differences between the experiences of teachers and academics in physics and those in history? The book draws on interviews with 115 school teachers and university academics to provide new perspectives on two important issues. Firstly, how, for the purposes of today’s schools and universities, can we adequately understand knowledge and knowledge building over time? Secondly, what has been productive and what has been counter-productive in recent efforts to steer and manage the changes in Australia?
269 pages, Hardcover
Published November 4, 2016
19 people want to read
About the author
Lyn Yates
16 booksProf Lyn Yates is an academic involved in theoretical and empirical projects related to knowledge, identities, inequalities and education policy and practice in Australia. She is a past president of the Australian Association for Research in Education, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Science, and has served on the Australian Research Council College of Experts and the executive of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association.
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December 23, 2017
In an odd way this book is about alternative version of me that never quite came to be. When I first enrolled at university a lifetime ago I finished first year of an applied physics degree. So, there was a time when I had thought of being a physicist. This has meant that I’ve retained an interest in science, even if not enough of an interest to actually finish the degree or work in the field. Then, while I was finishing my undergrad degree in philosophy, and professional writing and editing I became an archivist and also became fascinated by history, something I found was mostly dull as dishwater at high school, when I’d last studied it. If I hadn’t gotten distracted with my Ph.D. I was planning to be a humanities teacher – which would have involved my teaching History – but I certainly wouldn’t have considered myself an historian.
I mention all this because some of the teachers interviewed for this research are asked if they think of themselves as physicists or historians and some of them have trouble deciding if they should be thought of in that way or not.
This book is interesting in ways beyond merely that if the cards had fallen in a slightly different way I might have ended up being one or other of the professions discussed here. Physics and history as subjects are interesting for how they sit within the hierarchy of subjects at school. They are both rigorously academic, but in significantly different ways. I think both of them have aspects about how they are taught that might also be appealing to the other. And this is something people outside the fields themselves, and that have power over how they should be taught, are constructing education and how subjects like history and physics get taught.
Physics, when I learnt it, was what someone here describes it as – applied mathematics. Since then how physics is taught in high schools has moved away from solving ever more complex problems involving maths to understand electricity or mechanics and has included more about the social significance of physics. Apparently, this is seen as encouraging more girls into the subject. I think it is a good thing in the sense that, with Margaret Wertheim, I do believe we need to start thinking about physics as a science in the service of humanity, rather than as a priesthood.
History faces much the same problem in that it has too often been a kind of football in the culture wars. What is interesting is that often those outside of history are obsessed with what is or is not being taught. This is because they see history as a kind of ‘learning of facts’ about the past. Virtually no one that works in the field sees history as anything like that. The truth is that mostly history teachers couldn’t care less if you remember anything at all about the Vikings twenty minutes after the exam. The point of studying history is not so much to remember what George Washington was doing on a particular Saturday – but to be able to appraise sources of information and how these are selected to construct what are often self-serving narratives about the past and the present. That is, history teaches you to think in a very particular way. And that way is a damn good way to think. If done right, it is about the best way to challenge your own biases.
Physics also teaches you how to think in a particular way, but in a way that is significantly different to how history teaches you to think. Physics teaches you that there are universal laws that can be remarkably simple, but that their beauty is manifest in how powerfully they explain so many, otherwise, disparate facts.
What I really liked about this book was that it raised the complexities of the questions that face those putting together the curriculum in these subjects and allowed those complexities to stand. For instance, one of the truly odd things about Australia is how hard it is to get people to study Australian history. I find this quite depressing, not least because Australian history is actually fascinating. It says something very interesting about us as a people that we find our own story so dull. But, more seriously, the move to presenting history as a series of officially sanctioned facts eats away at the academic basis of the subject and undermines it as a means to encourage the next generation into the field. This is also a fear of the new physics curriculum, which some in the field see as not providing a foundation for people to be able to have the skills necessary to end up being physicists.
These questions are complex and aren’t solved by saying ‘dumbing down’ – no matter how earnestly or passionately. While I certainly see the reactionary intent of the desire to make history a series of facts to be rote learnt, there is something to be said for having some knowledge of the core ideas and events that have gone to shape our past. And while I get it that physics needs to be applied mathematics, there is also something to be said for a world where people understanding more about science (and particularly physics) than is currently the case – I don't feel science can’t be left to only those who can do advanced mathematics. The implications of science are too important for the majority of the planet to be ignorant of those implication.
This is a fascinating book, I really enjoyed it.
I mention all this because some of the teachers interviewed for this research are asked if they think of themselves as physicists or historians and some of them have trouble deciding if they should be thought of in that way or not.
This book is interesting in ways beyond merely that if the cards had fallen in a slightly different way I might have ended up being one or other of the professions discussed here. Physics and history as subjects are interesting for how they sit within the hierarchy of subjects at school. They are both rigorously academic, but in significantly different ways. I think both of them have aspects about how they are taught that might also be appealing to the other. And this is something people outside the fields themselves, and that have power over how they should be taught, are constructing education and how subjects like history and physics get taught.
Physics, when I learnt it, was what someone here describes it as – applied mathematics. Since then how physics is taught in high schools has moved away from solving ever more complex problems involving maths to understand electricity or mechanics and has included more about the social significance of physics. Apparently, this is seen as encouraging more girls into the subject. I think it is a good thing in the sense that, with Margaret Wertheim, I do believe we need to start thinking about physics as a science in the service of humanity, rather than as a priesthood.
History faces much the same problem in that it has too often been a kind of football in the culture wars. What is interesting is that often those outside of history are obsessed with what is or is not being taught. This is because they see history as a kind of ‘learning of facts’ about the past. Virtually no one that works in the field sees history as anything like that. The truth is that mostly history teachers couldn’t care less if you remember anything at all about the Vikings twenty minutes after the exam. The point of studying history is not so much to remember what George Washington was doing on a particular Saturday – but to be able to appraise sources of information and how these are selected to construct what are often self-serving narratives about the past and the present. That is, history teaches you to think in a very particular way. And that way is a damn good way to think. If done right, it is about the best way to challenge your own biases.
Physics also teaches you how to think in a particular way, but in a way that is significantly different to how history teaches you to think. Physics teaches you that there are universal laws that can be remarkably simple, but that their beauty is manifest in how powerfully they explain so many, otherwise, disparate facts.
What I really liked about this book was that it raised the complexities of the questions that face those putting together the curriculum in these subjects and allowed those complexities to stand. For instance, one of the truly odd things about Australia is how hard it is to get people to study Australian history. I find this quite depressing, not least because Australian history is actually fascinating. It says something very interesting about us as a people that we find our own story so dull. But, more seriously, the move to presenting history as a series of officially sanctioned facts eats away at the academic basis of the subject and undermines it as a means to encourage the next generation into the field. This is also a fear of the new physics curriculum, which some in the field see as not providing a foundation for people to be able to have the skills necessary to end up being physicists.
These questions are complex and aren’t solved by saying ‘dumbing down’ – no matter how earnestly or passionately. While I certainly see the reactionary intent of the desire to make history a series of facts to be rote learnt, there is something to be said for having some knowledge of the core ideas and events that have gone to shape our past. And while I get it that physics needs to be applied mathematics, there is also something to be said for a world where people understanding more about science (and particularly physics) than is currently the case – I don't feel science can’t be left to only those who can do advanced mathematics. The implications of science are too important for the majority of the planet to be ignorant of those implication.
This is a fascinating book, I really enjoyed it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review