Does anyone believe Schools will start teaching the solar system to have only 8 planets rather than 9 or not?
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I will be doing that with my classes starting this semester. Pluto is a very small and distant body about which we know very little any way. It is the only "planet" that has not yet been visited by a probe. (There is one on its way out there now, but it will still take several years to arrive.) When I was actually teaching an astronomy class, it really only got a brief mention.
With respect to science, new discoveries are being made all the time. Our understanding of the universe around us is constantly changing. If a teacher waits for these changes to be reflected in textbooks, then he will always be a number of years behind. This is especially true on the level of high school or lower where the districts buy the textbooks and they are used for several years. It's not so bad on the college level where the students purchase the books themselves and the book are updated every few years, but there will always be couple of years of lag between changes in our understanding an their appearance in textbooks. So, a good teacher has to be flexible and incorporate new information as it comes out rather than waiting for the textbooks to catch up. If the teacher does not do this then he will always be providing his students with out dated information.
No...look at how many textbooks and curriculums would have to be changed. I think the teachers may comment on it, but I don't see districts springing for new books.
Nope. Not until they get some new books. I'd give it a few years.
I'm just waiting for schools to teach anything useful period. That is if we could possibly put teachers back in charge of our public schools in the first place. I will stop there before I start ranting.
They have to. What I think they will do with the text books, is put footnotes. They just don't know how to leave good enough alone. Pluto is now a dwarf, not a planet.
Eventually they will - when new textbooks are due periodically. Until that time they will perhaps just mention the latest findings - maybe put up a remodified poster..., something along those lines.
I think they might start teaching it, but I doubt they'd go to the trouble of getting new books, cds and videos etc that have an updated version of a missing planet. Its cheaper just to tell the kids the planet has been downgraded then to buy a mass of new teaching materials that confirms what the teacher just said.
No they wont, not in Ireland. It'll take a few years till the fact has reached the last science teacher...
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