[ RadSafe ] Re: dumbing down

[DWard67262 at aol.com]

Subj:   Re: [ RadSafe ] [Fwd: Suggested public name change for APS]     
Date:   7/6/05 3:36:53 PM Mountain Daylight Time    
From:   DWard67262  
To: crispy_bird at yahoo.com   
    


With all due respect to you radsafers of more extensive credentials than I - 
I disagree. Earlier this year I taught three essentially identical courses in 
Atomic Physics, a subject I have taught intermittently for some 40 years. 
These students did not have the background of students a decade ago. Each decade I 
get the same impression of the current students.

I just returned from a High School reunion. In the 1950s, I had physics, 
chemistry, calculus through introduction to integral calculus, and Latin. None of 
those courses are taught at the pitiful excuse of what used to be my high 
school. My students earlier this year had completed three years in an engineering 
curriculum; two already had B.A.s in Physics, and Chemistry. None had had the 
high school background mentioned above. 

A few years ago I was teaching a course in engineered safeguards for the 
company I worked for. Only one of about fifty students could grasp that hydrogen 
would rise to the top of a containment building; the others had never heard of 
Archimedes'Principle.

Our school system continues to turn out students less well prepared, by the 
year.

The local newspaper uses slang and gutterlanguage that in my opinion is not 
fit for print. 

Dr.David G.Ward