Students ditching science in droves (1 Viewer)

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they need to make the science courses more interesting than the current syllabus

 

[brent012]

I agree with IamBread, there should be more emphasis on english skills than analysing texts if English is compulsory. A friend and i came up with an idea that they should get rid of standard and instead make 1 unit of English compulsory which would just be area of study and have the modules make up a seperate advanced english unit, that way a seperate 1 unit "English skills" subject as an alternative to that could also be introduced. Majority of the state would end up having a minimum of 2 units of english anyway (im guessing a lot of non-extension students wouldnt like to have 13 or 11 units and would pick and keep 2 units of english?) Also ESL as a subject could pretty much be removed if a similiar system was used, im guessing there would still need to be ESL classes though.

Anyway, isn't the usual argument for compulsory English that international students were getting high UAI's with poor english skills? Why not make ESL or English compulsory for international students and/or people who performed below a certain standard in SC english?

 

[IamBread]

Back on topic.. They need to make the course more about the science. Too often I found myself doing stuff that was beyond the course. It was like they were saying "Here's the basics, and now that we are starting to get into it, lets move to something else." We never got to do anything in the depth I would have liked. The concepts were there, they just need to keep going with it.

 

[Carrotsticks]

But seriously, fun irony is that perhaps there are lots of Internationals doing maths with you.

Surprisingly @ USYD Advanced Maths subjects like MATH1901,2,3 and 5 (Diff. Calc, Linear Alg, Integral Calc, Statistics respectively), there is a very large percentage of Caucasian people. Much more than I expected. Also, a good chunk of the Special Studies Program people are Caucasian.

 

[4025808]

Probably because science courses such as Physics are merely history lessons regarding scientific events that happened...

Yeah, that. I don't care about the 'effect on society' or whatever. I signed up for science, not frigging history lessons and 'ethics'.

This is the reason why I dropped HSC physics. I wasn't even learning concepts properly, it was just more like writing a whole load of bullcrap about society that you can find out on your own through Wikipedia. Also, HSC physics and chem is not even based on uni phys and chem. HSC is more like "describe the effect of transformers in society", while uni is more like "you have a wheel, it moves forward. analyze what happens". The HSC syllabus should be altered to have less writing, more concepts and more thinking about them.

How about compulsory to be taken, but not compulsory counted in the atar? (or will that just cause people not to give a damn)

Also you learn heaps of those 'English skills' of articulacy ect in your other subjects. (e.g. report writing)

Only if they change the syllabus to make it based on the respective uni subjects.

 

[IamBread]

Also, HSC physics and chem is not even based on uni phys and chem. HSC is more like "describe the effect of transformers in society", while uni is more like "you have a wheel, it moves forward. analyze what happens". The HSC syllabus should be altered to have less writing, more concepts and more thinking about them.

This is part of the reason I liked maths, and more specifically mechanics so much. It didn't care about impacts on society or anything like that. It was all about the concepts, the understanding. It was interesting. The physics course should have been more like mechanics, applying your understanding to a problem in order to find an answer. It also needs to move away from textbook like questions, and more onto things to apply understanding.

 

[Kimyia]

yeah, the environmental/society stuff in science is annoying but I still love science. As to why the number of students taking science is falling, I don't know but I know a lot of people have been put off doing chemistry and physics because they think its a lot harder than it actually is. Science ftw!

 

[RANK 1]

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educ...students-studying-science-20111220-1p3z4.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...cience-in-droves/story-e6frg8y6-1226227095267

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Any theories?

i just thought up of a theory for this though, in the 1990s alot of less smart kids drop out of school to be become tradies or drug dealers etc and thus leaving behind mostly the smart kids who want complete yr 12 and go to uni, and normally the smart kids would choose at least one science course for yr 12.

however these days u dont get as many ppl dropping out at yr 10 cos most trade jobs prefer a person with an hsc as oppose to a person with only a school certificate, therefore ur yr 12 cohort these days are now more saturated with less smart people as opposed to the 1990s and these less smart people generally dont do sciences but rather do subjects like food tech or industrial tech etc.

hence you have now a lesser proportion of students studying science.

 

[RANK 1]

amirite?

 

[RANK 1]

or it could be just the media trying sensationalise things

 

[IamBread]

i just thought up of a theory for this though, in the 1990s alot of less smart kids drop out of school to be become tradies or drug dealers etc and thus leaving behind mostly the smart kids who want complete yr 12 and go to uni, and normally the smart kids would choose at least one science course for yr 12.

however these days u dont get as many ppl dropping out at yr 10 cos most trade jobs prefer a person with an hsc as oppose to a person with only a school certificate, therefore ur yr 12 cohort these days are now more saturated with less smart people as opposed to the 1990s and these less smart people generally dont do sciences but rather do subjects like food tech or industrial tech etc.

hence you have now a lesser proportion of students studying science.

That could be it, but is there really that many more kids?

 

[Phoenix Fury]

It's almost certainly some combination of all/most things mentioned tbh, just that there will be some factors that have a more significant impact then others.

 

[Shadowdude]

Surprisingly @ USYD Advanced Maths subjects like MATH1901,2,3 and 5 (Diff. Calc, Linear Alg, Integral Calc, Statistics respectively), there is a very large percentage of Caucasian people. Much more than I expected. Also, a good chunk of the Special Studies Program people are Caucasian.

Wow. Actually, kinda makes sense because the internationals would be interested in Commerce or Engineering but not the actual study of mathematics - perhaps?

---

And to those about the 'english' portions of hsc science, i stuck with it anyway... because of the fun stuff and interesting things.

 

[IamBread]

And to those about the 'english' portions of hsc science, i stuck with it anyway... because of the fun stuff and interesting things.

I stuck with it. Physics was just too fun!

 

[myafanatic]

I don't understand the whole "science is being neglected" argument when Biology, Phys and Chem are all some of the most taken courses in the HSC, with around 10000+ in the candidature for the latter two and 15000 for Bio. Social sciences are a different story though - Geography has less than 5000 pretty consistently and there was a 10% decrease in the size of the Economics cohort this year.

As far as I'm concerned, it seems more like a tendency of people to "specialise" during the HSC - doing predominantly arts subjects/science subjects/humanities/social sciences without taking a broad range of subjects, but I don't see that the argument that science is dwindling has any merit whatsoever if you just simply look at the numbers.

 

[Bored_of_HSC]

I don't understand the whole "science is being neglected" argument when Biology, Phys and Chem are all some of the most taken courses in the HSC, with around 10000+ in the candidature for the latter two and 15000 for Bio. Social sciences are a different story though - Geography has less than 5000 pretty consistently and there was a 10% decrease in the size of the Economics cohort this year.

As far as I'm concerned, it seems more like a tendency of people to "specialise" during the HSC - doing predominantly arts subjects/science subjects/humanities/social sciences without taking a broad range of subjects, but I don't see that the argument that science is dwindling has any merit whatsoever if you just simply look at the numbers.

THE proportion of students studying science in Year 12 has almost halved in the past two decades, with a report from the Australian Academy of Science saying teenagers find the subject boring.
The report says more than 90 per cent of Year 12 students studied science in the early 1990s, but by last year the participation rate had dropped to about 50 per cent.

These trends are long-term. The numbers are up there. Though i can also see reason for dwindling numbers particular social sciences also (ie economics).

 

[lolcakes52]

Well, the generation which went through the equivalent of the HSC in the 1990's was generation X, the ones going through are the very last of generation Y. According to Strauss-Howe generational theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-Howe_generational_theory#Archetypes), Gen X was a Nomadic generation with under protective parents hence learning to fend for themselves and push themselves to a greater extent. Gen Y is, by contrast, a "Heroic" generation with over protective parents; perhaps this over protectiveness has resulted in a later maturation and hence, less self-motivation to do what many believe to be "harder subjects."

I don't really think that that is the whole reason, but it may contribute. There probably is no single reason but a conglomeration of factors which have resulted in a generation with less interest in science? Of course the syllabus changed in 2001 and the chemistry syllabus in particular went to shit.

Finally, I think the theory that as the number of students completing the HSC has risen those who have joined are those who had very little interest in school in general, and hence shy away from more challenging subjects, is probably right.

 

[jack487]

haha who else is doing all three sciences like me? =P

 

[ReneeApple]

I agree with IamBread, there should be more emphasis on english skills than analysing texts if English is compulsory. A friend and i came up with an idea that they should get rid of standard and instead make 1 unit of English compulsory which would just be area of study and have the modules make up a seperate advanced english unit, that way a seperate 1 unit "English skills" subject as an alternative to that could also be introduced.

Did you ever have grammar classes and other English skills in high school?

I wanted to die every time I had to enter the classroom it was so boring.

 

[ReneeApple]

One of my old science teachers used to always complain about the science syllabus for years 7-10. They leave you with strict instructions on what to cover, so you're only really covering the boring bits. A whole lot of fun things that they used to be able to do have now been banned because it's too dangerous. Looking up something on a computer counts as a prac.

People only have that to gage what the year 11 and 12 sciences will be like.

A lot of people at my school didn't do it cause they considered science boring. Or for "smart people".