The teaching of physics in schools

Our Committee was set up in order to suggest how the physics curricula in schools could be revised. The nature of any revision is obviously determined largely by the ultimate purpose that physics teaching in schools is considered to have. Our own discussions have been based upon our strong belief that physics, the most exact and fundamental of the sciences, is a vital part of modern culture and, as such, a necessary element in the education of all children. There are some who appear to equate science with technology and who advocate the extended or more intensive teaching of science because of its probable contribution to increased material well‐being. We are well aware of the economic aspects of technological development and of their importance; nevertheless, the cultural value of science—which is all too often inadequately appreciated—should be the aspect which determines the extent and the nature of the science courses in schools. Modern science has changed not only man’s environment but his whole approach to many of the problems which he has to face—and which his predecessors had to face. Science is not only a powerful weapon with which to attack material problems; it provides a new process of thought, and new criteria of credibility and of acceptability of evidence. Philosophy, theology, politics, and economics have all been influenced in differing degrees by science, and the most powerful influences have been the result of the changing picture of natural phenomena that scientific thought has created. In the present context, it cannot be too strongly emphasized that science is one of the humanities. Physics is not a collection of “facts” which can be learned; it is a highly imaginative intellectual structure of concepts that gives a meaningful and creative picture or model of such of man’s experience of the world in which he lives as it has yet been possible to integrate into a consistent whole. It is a picture that is constantly being given further detail and some parts of which are occasionally being redrawn. The reasons why physics has a place in a child’s education are firstly that the story of the drawing of that picture is a remarkable tribute to the power of the human mind and, secondly, the model of nature that physics provides is a necessary component of any fruitful modem thinking about some of the most important of the perennial problems that man has to attempt to solve as a social being.

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