re: #85 freetoken

Definitely. My belief has been for some time that nearly anyone can understand the basic ideas behind a great deal of science and mathematics, if the attempt is made, and the teaching is right for the student.

I had a dance teacher emphasize to me once that finding the right teaching method (for dancing) was most critical, and that individuals can be classed (for the purpose of dancing) as learning by one of three different methods.

Absolutely. You need time and patience to get to know your students and try to see how they think and what is blocking them. The you go by a mix of instinct and trial and error to get that block removed.

The most important thing is to never do too much for them. You have to show them the path and them cheerlead them down it. In science the biggest mistake is to just work the problem for them and say “see how it’s done?” That rarely helps as a primary method. It’s kind of like doing pushups to get someone else in shape.

So what you do is you sit and you show basics and give ever more in depth questions to solidify them before you go on to the next topic.

Of course getting people who are willing to teach like that is ard in a nation that values teachers slightly less than janitors.

If we gave a damn we would spend four times the money we do on our primary schools and have twice as many teachers at twice the pay and be certain we only hired the good ones. Of course then it would be a much more attractive position and you wouldn’t have the Girl’s field hockey coach teaching geometry - unless she also knew how to teach math.

I mean most people have no clue of the most basic things, because we teach people to memorize and not think about what was being taught.

Like here is a good one.

F=ma

You’ve heard of equal and opposite forces right? So the force from your feet on the floor is exactly canceled by the force from the floor on your feet.

You know this because you are not accelerating through the floor.

OK. If the forces are canceled, and they are always canceled when you are standing on the floor. How do you ever jump up?

500 Quixote points to a non physicist lizard who gets this.