The value of a good science education

Leo Kadanoff’s column on physics education follows several recent Physics Today articles on improving education in physics. The programs and proposals seem meritorious, and I’ve appreciated being able to contribute a small part to helping start the new Physical Review journal on physics education research. But it seems to me there’s a more fundamental problem than just the improvement of the way we teach: How do we make physics a subject that more people want to learn about?

The discoveries and accomplishments of physics in the early 20th century were awe inspiring, and their promise surely contributed to the growth of our field. So did the Manhattan Project, the Apollo space program, and similar major engineering efforts. My pursuit of physics largely stemmed from an early exposure to the Moon landings and the inspiration they provided to explore new things. But those things are now past, part of the legacy of our science. Somehow the promise and inspiration has been lost in physics, and we have to compete with the information and biological sciences that now seem much more open to exploration and wonder.

Kadanoff’s statement on “meaning and value,” while accurate, illustrates the current situation: “Evidence-based arguments aimed at finding provisional truths” isn’t exactly the siren call that will bring millions of eager and enthusiastic students. The argument that students should learn physics because it’s good for them seems to me to parallel the old argument to keep teaching classical Latin—it may have a point, but it’s doomed. In a world that has computers as stores of knowledge, ready calculators of even the most complex formulas, and prominent physicists who claim that robots are better space explorers than humans, the future for human exploration in the physical sciences seems strikingly limited. Can we do better to convey the open vistas that still do exist in the physical sciences? Or must we await the next set of revolutions comparable to those of the 20th century before broad public enthusiasm for our science can be rekindled?