Paul Cottle, a professor of physics at Florida State University and a member of the committee that drafted Florida’s new science standards has just offered this update on the situation regarding the “down grading” of Physics in the school curriculum.
Paul has learned that only 16% of Florida’s high school graduates have taken a physics course. The most recent national data from the American Institute of Physics (2001) shows that the corresponding national rate is 28% for public school students. That rate increases to 33% if you include students from private/parochial schools. Consequently, Florida’s rate is half the national rate, hence, Florida is officially “physics illiterate”.
If you learn anything in school, it should be how to think. We can all agree that even biologists should know quantum mechanics and special relativity, which are relevant to things like molecular biology and particle-beam cancer treatment. The new ideas of tomorrow, in any branch of science, will not come from just old physics. Remember, “”If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
— Derek Bok, attributed”.Â