Newton and the Doorbell

In an age when scientific advances occur daily, when engineers are sought by as many as six corporations, one of the most exasperating problems for educators is their failure to interest high school students in science.

Physics, particularly, has fallen into disrepute and has become a subject which "good students don't want to take and good teachers don't want to teach."

One group which has undertaken the revision of high school physics is the Physical Sciences Study Committee, a formidable corps of scientists, educators, and writers whose projects are financed by the government-appointed National Science Foundation. Housed in concrete and glass offices opposite M.I.T., the Committee's motivating assumption is that the teaching of high school physics has not changed since the turn of the century. With each technical advance, the Committee claims, a little of the philosophy of 1900 has given way and new skills appended to the curriculum. The result is a hash of abstracted Newtonian concepts, television sets, doorbells, and assorted gimmicks.

The Committee hopes to replace this mixture with "an atomic picture of the universe." In addition to underplaying mechanics, the physicists have emphasized the aesthetic and philosophical overtones of science. By making physics a more unified and rounded study, the Committee hopes to make science attractive to the college-minded high school student, regardless of his vocational plans.

The Committee published a textbook this summer and is experimenting with the new course this fall. In addition to the text--which has proven quite successful--the group is working to simplify classroom experiments and build up a supplementary film library. To provide extra reading matter for the exceptional physics student who now has virtually none available at his level, the Committee is beginning a one hundred and fifty volume paperback series.

The seven secondary schools the Committee has chosen to test the new course are all excellent to begin with, hence the effectiveness of such a course in a school with lethargic teachers and students can only be guessed. Even if independent schools and the top high schools alone were to change their curriculum, however, the Committee would have succeeded in reaching most of the top 25 per cent of the nation's secondary school students towards whom the course is aimed. If its first year is a reliable indication the Physical Sciences Study Committee should more than justify its existence.