Thanks to Matt Landreman for his Opinion piece (PHYSICS TODAY, March 2005, page 52). I have shared his sentiments since I was a student. The one bit of condescending jargon I disliked most was, "It is obvious to the
alert student that . . . ." It was never obvious to this alert student. The longer
I studied and read and taught, the more obvious it became that it was not obvious and usually involved
many complicated steps.
Two things helped me deal with such presumptions. First,
my father taught me that anything is easy when you know how, and I was determined to learn how. Second,
many of my early students were mature US Army aviation warrant officers who would not let me get away
with such statements. Their comment was, "I'll bet she can't fly a helicopter!"
May we all excise inconsiderate talk from our physics vocabulary.
Until
I read Matt Landreman's Opinion piece, I thought the affliction he described was specific to computer
scientists. When asked to explain any particular topic, a computer scientist invariably begins
with "Basically, . . ." and then fills several chalkboards with detailed set-theory
equations. It's good to know that physicists are also on the cutting edge when it comes to belittling
the masses!
Having
taught physics at Swarthmore College from 1955 to 1958, I suspect I know something of Matt Landreman's
experience there. I had some very good students, but unfortunately for them and me, I don't believe
any of them made it to Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. To the litany of trivial stories
I can add mine from when I took Philip Morse's Methods of Theoretical Physics course at MIT. When
Morse explained how he got the answer to some problem, I complained, "That was a trick!" He replied,
"A trick that works twice is a method."
I agree with the spirit of Matt Lan- dreman's Opinion but not with all of its substance. Words such as "trivial"
and "easy" are sometimes used in a patronizing manner, but I think they are more often intended in
the spirit of a hint. If an author tells me that a derivation is "easy," I take it to mean that if I get
bogged down in some messy equations I am probably doing it wrong and should back up and try again.
That hint can save me from flailing away needlessly on the wrong path. I would urge that such adjectives
be used with discretion and care rather than eliminated altogether.
Landreman replies: The use of "easy" and its synonyms described by Rio Beckwith is indeed a standard one.
We utter these words to convey that a calculation is not analytically impossible, that it does not
require the years of monastic toil required to prove the Last Theorem of Fermat, or that the solution
is immediately comprehended by the speaker—who, unlike his audience, has regularly thought
about the topic for the past 10 years. But the English language provides other words that more aptly
express what we mean: "possible," "feasible," "soluble," "practicable." There is nothing inherently
wrong with an instructor's hinting that a student's derivation involving 17-term expressions
and elliptic integrals is probably going awry. However, you can be a much more effective communicator
and educator by stating these suggestions directly—for example, "The question can be answered
without integration"—rather than falling into the bad habit of using emotionally laden
words like "simple," "obvious," or "trivial." These adjectives unnecessarily impugn your students'
competence and make them feel defensive.
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