Physics first?  Do the math!

I agree with Jim Jarvis that physics is and should be an upper level science course [April 2003 Speak Out "Should high schools teach physics first?"]. I currently teach eighth-grade science and introduce many basic physics concepts, but it is impossible to teach real physics to any student without first teaching algebra II. I received my B.S. degree in physics, not education. I received my teaching certificate through an alternative certification program. I would hate to see students entering college get "cheated" from an appropriate high school physics course.

On the other hand, I agree with teaching a physics "concept" course to younger students. You can have a lot of fun with physics and can really get students interested in science.

An appropriate elementary science education should also include basic physics concepts, as well as chemistry and biology. After all, we live in a "physical" world!

--Melissa Lewis
Dublin, TX

Clearly the choice to teach physics first is a choice to teach physics without serious trigonometry or vectors. Since many high schools today do not teach trigonometry to the average student anyway, these schools might just as well teach physics first. The version of physics that they are teaching after chemistry probably used minimal mathematics anyway. The physics teacher should then inform the students that they will not be able to learn more physics without selecting more advanced high school math courses. In this way, teaching physics first could play an important role toward improving the quality of the math program at the high school.

On the other hand, a high school whose students all take trigonometry really should reinforce this subject at an advanced level with a more serious physics course taken junior or senior year of high school.

--Christina Sormani
New York, NY

I taught high school physics in New York City for 35 years. I agree with the Yes view that the sequence of physics, chemistry and then biology is the most logical. However, Mr. Zaleski specifies that successful performance in algebra I (first year) is a prerequisite. Not surprisingly, this is exactly the prereq specified by the New York State Regents. Unfortunately, very few of our entering ninth-graders meet that standard. In fact, not many of our students qualify at the start of the 10th grade! This is why most of the NYC high schools begin biology (The Living Environment ) in grade 10, followed by chemistry and then physics. This is now compounded by the fact that our current middle school students no longer study algebra or even sequential math in grade 8. To expect a student entering ninth grade from this background to be able to be at ease with the mathematics required of a real physics course is unrealistic.

In my New York City world, I would introduce basic physics concepts and elementary chemistry as part of a ninth-grade science course, with lots of simple lab work, for our average freshman. After completion of such a course, a student could take the sciences in any sequence, although I would prefer chemistry, biology and then physics. Those ninth-graders who were highly proficient in math could follow the model proposed by Mr. Zaleski. Unfortunately, this is not the view of the New York Regents.

--Nelson Grumer
Bronx, NY

What do grades measure?

In the April 2003 issue, Stuart Rojstaczer states that data show grade inflation [Off the Tower, "Where all grades are above average"]. I disagree. I don't believe that the term "inflation" is appropriate when applied to as diverse and multifactored a social practice as academic grading. It's more important to ask what we are seeking to measure with grades and such derived data as averages, especially when aggregated by school, state or nation.

I say that grades are invalid measures of learning. They do not fairly measure academic performance across settings and over time, and they don't accurately predict performance. Now that standards-based tests are widely used in K-12 education, grades and averages become even less valid. Learning is devalued whenever the first score and the last score are averaged together in any learning enterprise. Furthermore, it's impossible to average standards: A student either masters something or not.

I know that academic institutions are repositories of traditions, many of which are meaningless and harmless. Grades are becoming more meaningless, but they are not harmless when used to punish those who seek only to learn, and to reward those who have learned only to seek grades. Perhaps someday in a museum exhibit next to the hickory stick we'll see five of the first six letters of the alphabet and the numbers 0-4 or 0-100 (to two decimal places), along with explanatory text describing how they too were mercilessly abused. Until then, grades will persist in educational discourse, hindering learning without helping education, the epitome of precision without accuracy.

--Henry St. Maurice
Stephens Point, WI

Grade inflation seems to be an issue at the colleges of the working class but not at the colleges of the elite. My observation is that at working class colleges, teachers and administrators try to hold the line: They want their students to earn what they get, and working-class students accept this structure. But the elite have different expectations: It's called privilege, and they seem to be getting what they want. So it's A's for the rich and C's for everyone else.

I suggest that working-class colleges butt out of the grade inflation issue, at least until the elite schools get their houses in order. Students need to have the right to fail, of course, but after that, teachers should be allowed to grade as they see fit.

--K.J. Walters
Monroe, NY

High health costs, low wages and the war

"If access to services is expanded, costs rise; if costs are lowered, access is cut. The only way to avoid this is to change the system entirely," wrote Marcia Angell in the New York Times on Oct. 13. Does Christina Bartolomeo, who quotes Angell in "Too High a Price?" [AFT On Campus, March 2002], concur? How do we make this change? Her box of proposals, Saving on Healthcare, is a list of Band-Aids. A nationwide solution is offered only at the tag end, and Bartolomeo very carefully promises us: A single-payer system is not socialized medicine.

Aw come on!! Is socialism that dirty a word? Not in the face of Alabama State University's testimony, on page 3 of the same issue [News & Trends], that ASU's top CEO makes 12 times the salary of some full-time faculty! Medicine and health are just parts of "The System," in which top industry CEOs can make 120 times their rank-and-file workers' salaries.... If not ashamed, unions ought to be admitting they're getting only what they deserve. They knuckled under to redbaiters in the '50s and surrendered their commitment to class conflict even as the class they were legitimately fighting--owners and managers--mounted a whole new set of WMDs (Taft-Hartley et al.) and began to pick them off. Left to right.

While I'm on a roll: The AFT's weasely--OK, blackfooted-ferrety--resolution on Iraq as reported on page 3 just proves my point. I am waiting for unions, any unions, to say loudly and clearly: George W. Bush is dead wrong. And our representatives in Congress who voted to give him authority to attack Iraq without first clearing his order through Congress committed a crime against the Constitution and humanity.

--Margaret N. Weitzmann
Potsdam, NY

Internationalism and solidarity are the heart and soul of the labor movement. Labor unions in virtually all Western democracies, and in most countries that make up the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, oppose preemption, unilateralism and the war in Iraq based on these radical doctrines. Where is our voice?

--Stephan Peter
Anoka, MN