Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But academic standards have not remained the same; as the range of subjects taught in schools has widened, the depth of knowledge taught in maths and sciences has fallen. 30 years ago, an undergraduate physics textbook could assume that the reader knew what a "line integral" or a "2nd order ordinary differential equation" was; today, people are going to university to study physics, having barely been introduced to elementary calculus, and a textbook used when I was a student in the late 1970s would be incomprehensible. Textbooks are constantly having to be revised, therefore, to match the syllabuses set by the school examination boards. Even the textbooks I wrote myself in the mid '90s can no longer be used, for that reason - they are now considered to be too "hard".
|
The knowledge needed for each theorem taught has not changed. It doesn't matter if I know what a differential is or not before a class if that class is attempting to teach me how about the Navier-Stokes equations.
If I am unprepared there are two options, I can look it up on my own time in another book or on Google, or I can ask another person such as a TA during office hours. Or I can take the third option and fail out of class, which is what should happen if a student is unprepared academically. Claiming that falling academic standards are why textbooks are so high, is ludicrous in that basic principles needed for understanding more advanced principles do not change. You might as well claim that the new generation is not nearly as brave, smart, or hard-working as any previous generation, and end with a "KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN."