@markmillonas1896

6 months ago

As an ex-physics professor I know the answer to this question. I’d like to say my college teaching experience is why I know the answer, but honestly my years of helping and attempting to help my “pre-med” or “other” friends and acquaintances deal with their first physics and calculus courses already taught me where the essence of the difficulty lies for some people. The answer is that Physics, and also Calculus, are very often the first place where a whole LOT of students come up hard against the requirement to turn actual understanding and first principles, rather than rote memorization, into practice. It is the first place in our present educational pathways that many students come up against the a brick wall that is very hard to penetrate with rote learning. Yes, students are exposed to baby versions of this kind of “thinking on your feet” much earlier, like proving theorems in geometry. And they can fake their way though an imitation of the process in algebra and pre-calculus by memorizing and implementing a small set of rules which they are then taught to apply by rote. But the rubber really hits the road in Physics, Calculus, and especially in the required pre-med “Physics with Calculus” - the horror, the horror! For many students the memorization-heavy, analytical-thinking-minimal method they have used with great success up to then fails at this crucial juncture. “Fails” is perhaps too strong a word since absolute failure would probably have been a gift at this point. In reality it is more cruel that that - the memorization it takes to avoid fundamental understanding, the FAR easier alternative, ramps up exponentially until it reaches an absurd level forcing a crisis in people that haven’t yet had to face such things previously. An (over) simple example - the absurdity of trying to memorize the “formulas” (x = g(t), v = h(t) ) for every trivial mechanical question involving Newton’s laws rather than learning how to apply them ab initio. Anyway, many of the students that are freaking out at this point are experiencing the failure not of their intelligence, but their highly developed, and by this point time-tested and proven memorization-heavy “learning” (and it is not an exaggeration to call this UNDERSTANDING) techniques. This problem is something very hard - leaving aside that teaching students HOW to think is not really in the job description - for the professor to simply “teach” the student out of. I know from experience the disconnect when a student that wants “help” but is only prepared to accept it in the form of an answer to “tell me which formula I should memorize?” The frameworks for exchange of information themselves are mismatches - or aptly, “the matrix is something one cannot simply be told about, you have to experience it for yourself”. 😂 For a few or the students, the ones that are already prepared, this is a point they experience as a kind of liberation. For the others, especially some of the pre-meds that are “forced” to endure this trial - coming in to the class with an “I’m gonna hate this, but I have to pass and hopefully get an “A” to get into med school” really doesn’t help - it can seem like nothing makes sense anymore. To have this occur at a time when nearly all of these students are also experiencing a new environment, and new social pressures, well that is a recipe for trouble!

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