New trends in physics teaching, v.4; The ... - unesdoc - Unesco

New Trends in Physics Teaching IV
Outside the examination programme, insufficient time is available to teach such a topic at an
advanced level. It was also felt that 18 year-olds have a good grounding in physics and are mature
enough to think in terms of the future of their society and the implications of technological
development. It must be realized that teachers do not have much experience in dealing with the
subject. Both content and method are new, and since it is an optional topic, there is no insistence
that teachers teach it at this stage. In the future, such topics could be included in the core
syllabus.
AIMS AND CONTENTS
There are no easy solutions to the problems mankind faces; every solution produces harmful side
effects. Therefore, decisions have to be made at all levels: government, parliament, local council,
works council, family. More and more people have the opportunity to participate in decisionmaking
at one of these levels. They should be prepared for this, as making a choice in today’s
problem areas is not an easy task. Education has an important role to play here, and especially
science education, as so many problems have a scientific or technological content. Insight into
the links between science and society is required and the course which will be described is meant
to contribute to that.
With thisgeneral aim in mind, we should be better prepared to look at the content of the course
(table 1 and appendix) [ 11. The subject matter is divided into three parts. The text book starts
by looking at a few problem areas where physics, technology and society interact. These are:
energy, sound, transport and weapons. In each case, as much classroom physics is used as is
considered suitable. The emphasis, however, is on the problems themselves rather than the
physics, and attention is not diverted from the social, economic and political aspects. As these
topics deal with controversial areas, care has been taken not to give prominence to the opinion
of the authors by carefully ordering the arguments and by leaving the weighing of the arguments,
as an exercise, to the students.
The least cheerful chapter is that on weapons. It shows the highly advanced scientific and
technological effort that is put into the development of modern weaponry. The arms race is
described as well as endeavours to control it by negotiation. Some teachers hesitate to include
it in the curriculum as they feel it puts a strain on supposedly ‘clean’ physics. The authors feel
that reality demands that we treat this aspect of physics too.
There is not enough time to deal with all four topics; thus it would be best to teach the energy
topic and to choose one of the three others.
The second part of the book is devoted to a more general treatment of the role of science in
society. One chapter deals with the situation in Third World countries. We ask what type of
science and technology are most suited to solving their problems. Intermediate technology is
presented as one possible answer. Some examples in which physics plays a role are quoted. This
chapter aims at giving the students the feeling that the world is larger than their immediate
surroundings. The next chapter describes the historical development of the interaction between
science, technology and society in the industrialized countries. This is illustrated by taking
‘communication’ as an example. Next the control of the development of science and technology
is looked at. Five different views are outlined on the causes of the negative effects of sciencebased
developments in society, from Marx and Roszak to Galbraith and the modern Christiandemocrats.
The last part of the text deals with the future. Some methods of technological forecasting are
described. It is made clear that at each point in time several choices are possible and that their
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