Should we teach the wrong things to children because it’s easier to understand?
It’s no secret. We love Minute Physics. They have a way of taking complex ideas and dumbing them down to our level so that we don’t have to go to school to study quantum mechanics to understand some of the most important components that affect our daily lives. This time, they did something they normally don’t do. They made us think, not just about the science at hand but more importantly about a moral efficiency challenge facing many schools. Some concepts are hard to understand. There are false but “close enough” concepts that often cover the ideas and give us a decent understanding of what is happening in the world of science, but they are often misleading. Is this right? Take a look at the the video and some of the points where they demonstrate the difference between reality and conveniently teachable without the benefit of a PhD. What do you think? Dumb it down or teach it right from the start? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM630Z8lho8
Reminds me of Chemistry in high school. My first year we learned about titration. My second year, in AP Chem, we were informed that everything we learned about titration was an incorrect simplification, and this is how you really do it….