Physics workshop, July 26, promotes a different path to science literacy

By Thomas Oberst

Apples and rockets, quarks and black holes, E=mc² and lots of math. That's right: It's physics. But are ninth-graders ready to study Newton and Einstein? Even more important, are high school teachers and administrators willing to change a century-old, ingrained science curriculum?

Ready or not, educators are being forced to confront a national movement called Physics First, which aims to reverse traditional high school science pedagogy. The present sequence -- biology first, chemistry second, physics third -- is being judged as ineffective and illogical, and many education reform seekers think that teaching physics to ninth-graders could be the answer to improving student performance on national science assessments and to recruiting more women and minorities for science-track careers.

On July 26 Ahren Sadoff, research professor at the Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) at Cornell, and Lora Hine, education outreach coordinator at LEPP, will host a LEPP-funded workshop, "Challenges in Implementing Physics First: Changing the High School Science Sequence." The workshop, now in its second year, will bring superintendents, high school principals, science administrators and physics teachers predominantly from the New York state region to campus to discuss and promote the earlier teaching of physics in high schools.

Why the emphasis on physics? Most scientists agree that physics-chemistry-biology is the logical ordering of the sciences. Biological organisms, which are extremely large and complex systems composed of billions of molecules, are usually better understood by conceptually breaking them down into their underlying chemistry; but a fundamental understanding of chemistry requires knowledge of the atoms and forces described by physics. Physics, which often deals with the interaction of only one or two objects at a time, is in many senses the simplest and most fundamental of the sciences. Teaching physics first would give the high school science curriculum the coherence it lacks and allow students to build upon concepts they learned in previous years.

"We aren't trying to train everybody to be physicists," Sadoff said, "we're trying to let the average student-citizen know about science. Physics First really is a movement to try to change science literacy."

Nationwide, almost all high school students take biology in their first year, but only 50 percent go on to take chemistry in 10th grade, and fewer than 30 percent ever take physics in grades 11 for 12. This sequence was established in 1894, when biology was mostly descriptive. It wasn't until 1995 that Physics First -- the brainchild of 1988 physics Nobel laureate Leon Lederman -- came on the scene.

To date about 300 schools nationwide have implemented Physics First, more than 60 percent of them private. Two of the most notable public examples are the San Diego (Calif.) City School District and the Cambridge (Mass.) School District. In San Diego in the 2002-03 school year, 10,240 freshmen studied physics. Dan Lavine, the secondary site administrator from San Diego, will be a speaker at the workshop.

Those interested in attending the workshop should contact Hine at 255-2319 or send e-mail to lkh24@cornell.edu.