Re: [asa] science education (was: YEC the default Christian belief?)

I'm teaching at a Christian school, but this course sequence should still be
fairly typical, I believe in larger public schools.

9th grade: Biology
10th grade: Physical sciences (this would include geology, meteorology,
chemistry, physics, some astronomy)
11th grade: chemistry
12th grade: physics

Other electives are also available, though not every semester or year such as
Human anatomy, zoology, or botany.

It isn't that students can't take these courses out of sequence ---if the
scheduling allowed for such a thing (& in our small school --it wouldn't) they
could pile up all four science classes in one year if they wanted, but who would
want to do that? So in a practical sense, moving one science class elsewhere
means encouraging the re-scheduling for another for the obvious reason that we
want sciences spread out over their high school years.

gotta go --time for geometry class.

--Merv

Quoting Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>:

> Merv:
>
> I think I'm not understanding you.
>
> Are you saying that if the subject of evolution were moved up to a higher
> grade, physics would have to be moved down to a lower grade to compensate?
> That doesn't follow, unless I badly misunderstand your system.
>
> I wasn't speaking of moving an entire biology *course* to a higher grade,
> but of moving *material* from a lower-grade biology course to a higher-grade
>
> biology course. For example, if biology in your school is studied in ninth
> grade and eleventh grade, I was suggesting moving *the evolution unit* (the
> two or three weeks spent studying evolution) from the ninth-grade course to
> the eleventh grade course, and correspondingly moving something else (maybe
> ecology, it doesn't matter, since it's only for illustrative purposes) down
> from the eleventh grade course to the ninth grade course. If physics were
> offered in, say, tenth grade and twelfth grade, it wouldn't be affected in
> the slightest by the shuffling of material between biology courses. So I'm
> missing your point.
>
> Or are you saying that biology is only offered *once* in all of high school,
>
> and physics is only offered *once* in all of high school? If that's the
> case, American science education is in bad shape indeed.
>
> Please describe the system for me. Suppose I enter ninth grade in a typical
>
> American school -- use your school if you wish -- and I know right from the
> start that I want to be a scientist or engineer, and I want to take *every*
> science course available to me at *every* grade level. What would the
> sequence be? What could I take in ninth grade? In tenth? In eleventh? In
>
> twelfth? How many could I get in total? (Leave out the math courses; I
> just want to know about the science courses.)
>
> Please indicate also if you are talking about semestered courses (running
> from Sept to Jan, or from Feb to June) or full-year courses (running from
> Sept to June).
>
> Cameron.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <mrb22667@kansas.net>
> To: "Cameron Wybrow" <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
> Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 5:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] YEC the default Christian belief? (was: (aliens) November
>
> Newsletter from Reasonable Faith)
>
>
> > Quoting Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>:
> >
> > That's an interesting proposal (to move biology to an 11th or 12th grade
> > level.
> > And maybe it would accomplish a "side-stepping" of controversy as you
> > suggest.
> > As a physical sciences teacher, though, I do enjoy the luxury of teaching
> > physics as a senior level class when students have some algebra and
> > trigonometry
> > (and maybe even some calculus) under their belt. Teaching it earlier
> > would
> > seriously weaken the content. It would be interesting to hear if high
> > school
> > level life science teachers would or could teach biology more rigorously
> > to a
> > senior than they do to a sophomore.
>
>
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Received on Thu Nov 19 11:03:23 2009