Staff crisis threatens physics....

[Royston]

Find today's news article here...

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4450208.stm

 

It's really quite sad there's a lack of interest in the subject, I'm wondering why this trend has grown over the years.

[DV8 2XL]

I don't know about the U.K. but in North America you can make more money delivering newspapers than you can as a teacher.

[ecoli]

I don't know about the U.K. but in North America you can make more money delivering newspapers than you can as a teacher.

 

Definately depends where you live. In my high school, the teachers made plenty of money. IN Manhattan, they're so desperate for teachers, you don't even need to be fully certified to become a teacher. That's a result of the low pay.

[Royston]

Relative to other careers in the public sector, and with the amount of study and responsibility teachers have, the wages are pretty poor in the UK, and there's been much debate about this over the years. I have a good friend who is a teacher, and some of the difficulties he has certainly doesn't reflect his earnings.

 

I think the issue here though is that students are showing a lack of interest in physics and so this has a knock-on effect to the amount of placements for teachers. I'm wondering if the subject just seems too hard for many...maybe because there is a growing trend of the population just wanting the easier option, or that physics has come to a point where it's almost impossible to make a real impact, maybe someone in the field could answer that ?

[navynuke]

I had plenty of physics, in high school, Navy Electronics schools, and Nuclear power school, and later in college. If you want to better understand how things work, it is good to have a lot of physics under your academic belt.

BUT, now that we don't fix things anymore, maybe it isn't as important to the general population, or the technicians among us. It is cheaper to buy a new module or even a complete unit, such as a TV, than it is to repair the old one.

And digital items that I have worked on often diagnose themselves, leaving me to just swap modules or circuit boards.

Engineers and scientists will still need it, but the general population can dumb down and it will likely make no difference to the rest of the world.