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Velocity of light

Why is it essential that each stage of physics education must be regarded as a foundation for the next? I realise that it may be convenient for an A-level teacher to refer back to 0-level material to allow him to accelerate his coverage of some topics, and it may be inconvenient for polytechnic and university lecturers to have to cope with the present range in their students’ knowledge of physics. But if problems arise they should be considered as something to be solved in the context of the current course rather than failings of the previous one. The assumed relationship between successive stages has been taken for granted for some time, but now this link, having been built into the specification of 16+, appears to be becoming the principal aim rather than one of a number. And at A-level a national core has been established specifically as a basis for further studies, which will occupy more than three-quarters of the A-level course. The principle of continuity has two detrimental effects, particularly at A-level: it suggests that, unlike engineering, medicine, law or economics, it is not possible to start physics from scratch at 16 or 18, and it leads to fragmented school physics courses. My own experience as a member of a GCE Physics Panel over the last two years has been a depressing one, as we tried to revise our syllabus in the light of the national core. Since 1974 we have had a reasonably modern, coherent syllabus, with no material included that was not relevant within the context of the syllabus itself. Now, by being asked simply to fill gaps in an existing framework, we have something which, apart from electronics, is academic, archaic, appears to lack appeal to teachers and is effectively a set of foundation stones without the superstructure that completes the building. Indeed, some would suggest that it looks more like Stonehenge than even a modern foundation. As a frustrated syllabus planner, I am asking, first, whether other syllabus planners are as frustrated as I am; second, whether it is fair to ask that physics courses at 16+, A-level and in higher education should be both allowed and made to stand on their own feet; and finally, if the answers to the first two questions are ‘yes’, what are we going to do about it?