The BBC discuss the University of Buckingham’s report on the death throes of physics teaching in England. Geeklawyer is, as some here know, a physicist - he would say an ex-physicist but becoming a physicist is a bit like becoming a Muslim: once indoctrinated you can’t leave. Nor would he wish to: whereas God doesn’t exist physics does.
Physics teaching is something about which Geeklawyer is passionate (he briefly and abortively trained as a teacher before realising he was crap & would do more damage to the kids than a night with Micheal Jackson) and he wails at its decay. It is, furthermore, entirely avoidable and entirely the cause of government; both Labour and Conservative are guilty, with the latter bearing the majority blame for starting the decay in the ’80s.
Physics matters. More, it is the only thing that really matters. It is life, existence and why. It’s unsolved mysteries are deeply intriguing and an intellectual challenge: a bit like chess, except that chess is stupid and pointless so not really like chess at all.
Physics matters: even more than Geeklawyer.
To read the abominable contempt of a school that takes children out of science classes so that they can ponce around in arts lessons is repugnant: ‘Contemporary Theatre workshops’ instead of enlightenment. Sickening.
Part of the decline is squarely down to that fact that schools shuffle the subject off onto teachers who don’t understand it and not that interested in it anyway, but its in their job spec so that have to go through the teaching motions. If Ms Fluffy the biology teacher didn’t do an A level in it herself, how the buggery bollocks is she going to enthuse kids about it when all she has done in it is a 20 hour course to supplement her own school experience? Confused bored uninterested kids? Yea, no shit.
Geeklawyer would say that while expert teachers are critical that is not enough: experts are rarely good educators. Geeklawyer’s tutors at university were World experts but they were barely skilled enough to teach the 101 class in ‘Breathing and Walking at the Same Time’.
Bizarrely for someone with a law degree Ruthie has A levels in Physics and Applied Mathmatics. She chose these A levels knowing she wanted to go on and do a law degree, becuase she was brilliant at everything but just hated doing coursework which Arts subjects required.
It has come in astonishingly useful in the more technical aspects of the regulatory crime in which she now practises. Particularly as most other lawyers dont have a clue.
The application of differential calculus to her bills may also help to explain some of the figures