> Do you have a specific example of where you think you need to lie to teach physics?
If we are defining "lie" to mean "simplifying the model to allow students to understand what's going on" (which is what we're talking about) then basically every field of physics required some simplifications in order to teach.
For instance, it would be "lying" to teach Newtonian dynamics and Newton's theory of gravity at all without explaining relativity -- Newton's theory of gravity is "wrong" after all. It would be "lying" to teach electromagnetism without first explaining quantum mechanics. However it would be impossible to teach anything to a high-school or undergraduate student if you first had to explain everything else in order to teach F=ma or Gauss's law.
I think there's also a limit to how many times you can say "this is simplified" to students before they feel like they're being pandered to or that they're being told they're "not smart enough to understand the full theory". Physics was developed over many thousands of years, it's not really reasonable to expect a student to be able to learn it in one shot. Physics courses are often structured so that you learn concepts in historical order so that you learn how concepts were developed and what motivated future discoveries -- that is also a very useful thing to learn in addition to the actual physics.
I believe the same applies to mathematics education.
Source: I majored in physics. Every year we had an electromagnetism course and we learned that the model we had learned last year was too simplified to work with. Same goes for thermodynamics.
> If we are defining "lie" to mean "simplifying the model to allow students to understand what's going on" (which is what we're talking about)
No, it isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about making categorical statements that are false. Telling students that you're teaching them a simplified model and there are complications that will be added back later is not lying. But telling them categorically that the simplified model is true and not even talking about the fact that it's a simplified model and there are complications being left out, is lying. And the latter is what the posters I've been responding to are attempting to defend.
> I think there's also a limit to how many times you can say "this is simplified" to students before they feel like they're being pandered to
I have never said that is necessary. Of course it's not. Once you've explained at the outset that you're teaching them a simplified model and there are complications being left out, obviously you're not going to repeat it with every single sentence. Any more than the people who are advocating telling students categorically "multiplication is repeated addition" with no mention of all the complexities lurking underneath are advocating repeating that with every single sentence.
> or that they're being told they're "not smart enough to understand the full theory"
I have never said they should be told that. Teaching the simplified model could be due to nothing more than limited teacher time and knowledge. There's nothing wrong with the teacher honestly telling the students that. Bonus points for encouraging them to investigate further on their own if they're interested.
> No, it isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about making categorical statements that are false.
That's not what we're talking about. Describing multiplication as repeated addition as a way of teaching a new concept to elementary school children is simply not lying.
Your issue is that the fact it is a simplified model is not being explicitly told to students, which is being called lying. While it would be false to say that a simplified model is the complete picture, teachers aren't standing up in class and saying "this is all there is to this subject, no need to learn any more!".
My main issue with your suggestion is that young students simply aren't going to remember a side comment at the beginning of their classes that this isn't the full picture -- so you will either have to repeat this regularly (which will be demoralising and confusing) or there really is no strong benefit to doing so.
You say that the "categorical statement" is not being repeated with each sentence -- but the thing is that when students use or discuss the tools they've learned, they're reinforcing their mental model of how the tool works. So in a way, the simplified model is being repeatedly reinforced in their mind. If you want to counteract it, saying once at the beginning of each class that introduces a new concept "this isn't the full picture" won't help most students overcome the issues they hit when they learn their old model doesn't work for more complicated problems.
> I have never said they should be told that.
You misunderstood what I said -- I said that constantly being told that what they're learning is "not the real theory" (or however you want to phrase) is demoralising in of itself -- it needlessly gives the impression to students that they're not smart enough to understand "the real theory". I never claimed that you said that teachers should say that explicitly.
We lie when when we teach calculus by relying on hand-wavy 'limit' proofs, without grounding students in the foundational aspects of point set topology.
It's much more productive pedagogically to get an intuition for slope and area than it is to get an intuition for compactness and the infinite intersection of open sets, but slope and area are A LIE.
Well, I'd be curious what your first ten sentences to a group of, say, 11th graders would be about Newtonian gravitation, and how those would compare to what you'd say about the same subject to 8th graders.
It seems elsewhere in the thread that you don't consider it lying if one gives a general disclaimer that models aren't perfect, but I wonder whether or not that general disclaimer wouldn't inoculate the idea that multiplication is repeated addition? It's an imperfect model that super useful for all the numbers available to students when they learn what multiplication is. And I wonder further whether there's not an implicit disclaimer that what you're learning isn't the final word inherent in the structure of the educational system?
Explaining the structure of an atom without having to explain atomic orbitals and standing waves. Explaining classical mechanics without including a bunch of caveats about relativistic speeds.
> Explaining the structure of an atom without having to explain atomic orbitals and standing waves.
My high school chemistry teacher had no problem explaining this to me, when teaching the periodic table of the elements, without telling any lies and without going into the details of the quantum mechanics involved. The Pauli exclusion principle and a general statement that the details of the quantum mechanics were out of scope for that class was enough.
> Explaining classical mechanics without including a bunch of caveats about relativistic speeds.
My high school physics teacher had no problem explaining classical mechanics including the caveats. The caveats took only a few minutes early in the semester. What's the problem?
I remember my High School chemistry lesson from the 90's clearly explained we were working with historical models, we talked about nature of the models developments and the experiments that led to them.
We started with the JJ Thomson "plumb pudding model"
Then we learnt about Rutherford and the gold foil experiment which invalidated Thomson's model.
Then we learnt about emission spectrum and the Bohr model which invalidated Rutherford's model.
The whole time it was clear that nothing was "settled" the models were useful at explaining the observed phenomena but were incomplete.
Same thing in physics. We started with debate about nature of light and examined things like lumniferous aether and Michaelson Morley experiment, double slit experiment etc. Then Maxwell and electromagnetism leading to Heinrich Hertz and the photoelectric effect, which led to Planck and Einstein.
I certainly never thought I was being lied to. We were treading along the same path as those who had came before.
> The whole time it was clear that nothing was "settled" the models were useful at explaining the observed phenomena but were incomplete.
Which is exactly what I think should be told to students when a simplified model is being taught. But the people I've been responding to are advocating for telling students the simplified model as if it were exactly correct and covered all cases. That is what I am saying is lying.
It's much simpler to compute answers with classical mechanics, and the answers are accurate enough for many practical purposes. As the saying goes, all models are wrong but some are useful.
"When they performed [this experiment] at [experimental accuracy] they observed [that result] which makes them think [atomic orbitals and standing waves]."
Someone who thinks they understand physics without considering experimental accuracy doesn't understand physics.
The goal of primary education isn't to understand any particular thing, it's to provide the intellectual training to understand anything. Someone doesn't need to leave middle school or even high school "understanding physics", but with a base for future understanding. The Bohr model is more than sufficient to help understand chemical reactions.
People seem to be interpreting "lie-to-children" as meaning "[you must] lie[ ]to[ ]children". I don't think there's anyone who thinks that children should be actively deceived into not knowing about quantum mechanics, just that it's OK to use simplified explanations as one step in the process of learning.
Do you have a specific example of where you think you need to lie to teach physics?