The proposal by Leon Lederman to teach physics in the 9th grade, chemistry in the 10th grade, and biology in the 11th grade is interesting, but his justification is unconvincing.
Most physics courses cover classical mechanics before electricity and magnetism, and most students I have spoken to attest to finding the concepts of electricity and magnetism hard to grasp because they involve unfamiliar phenomena. The collision of two pool balls is within the realm of many adolescents’ experiences; the buildup of charge on a capacitor is not. To give an extreme example, it would be absurd to teach general relativity before Newton’s theory of gravity, even though the latter is less fundamental than—indeed is a special case of—the former. Learning should probably parallel the history of scientific discovery, with familiar phenomena studied and understood at least superficially before general theories are developed to explain higher-level phenomena.
The ideal approach, I believe, is to teach biology, chemistry, and physics simultaneously, as is done in Europe. Only the time-honored tradition of the fixed daily schedule really stands in the way of this arrangement. Carefully constructed curricula that offer two or three class periods per week of each subject would enable the connections between the disciplines to unfold at the appropriate times while allowing exploration of familiar scientific concepts before general theories. Concepts could then be revisited in the light of the theories.
To return to the gravity example, the best way to understand Newton’s gravity is first to study it, then to study Einstein’s general relativity, and finally to recognize how Einstein’s theory reduces to Newton’s theory in the special case in which humans normally experience gravity.
