About the Role of Physics in Acouring Vocational Training

This article gives a summary of the wide range of problems connected with the teaching of physics at Secondary Vocational Schools (i. e. for the age group of 15 to 19) in Czechoslovakia. This paper, which is supposed to be just an introduction to the study of the role and the objective of physics in the process of vocational training, deals with the function of physics as a subject providing both general education and vocational training. The author gives examples showing how suitable physics is in educating pupils to adopt a scientific world outlook and thus realizing the aims of communist education. The paper also deals with the question of relationship between general education and vocational training and the question of the tasks of physics as a subject at Secondary Vocational Schools resulting from this relationship. In connection which the onset of the scientific-technological revolution the paper accounts for the necessity of raising the level of instruction in physics and the need for modernizing the subject- -matter, methods, forms and means of instruction in the teaching of physics at Secondary Vocational Schools. Special attention is given to applied physics and the preparatory function of physics for vocational training. This preliminary study is based on, and further develops the results of a research carried out by the Research Institute of Vocational Schools in Prague (laboratory in Olomouc) in the years 1961-63 at 25 engineering works. It puts forward a suggestion for the solution of the above- -mentioned problems by the inclusion of a new subject — technical physics — in the curriculum of Secondary Vocational Schools. This new subject would replace the following three existing subjects: physics, mechanics and electrical engineering. The conception of the new subject results from the endeavour to place physical applications in mechanics and electrical engineering on a solid scientific basis, and to abandon the traditional manner of explaining these disciplines which is based only on empiricism. The suggestion presupposes among other things that the course in applied physics will thus be more evenly, more appropriately and consequently more profitably staggered in each of the four years of the school. It is expected that by making use of the time reserves hidden in the present parallelisms and duplications in the subject-matter the inappropriateness and haste in covering the subject-matter in physics in the first year of the school will be eliminated. The time thus gained will make it possible to extend the use of visual aids and to supplement the existing, predominantly verbal system of instruction, with laboratory practice in all classes. Laboratory practice is attractive for the pupils, raises the pupils’ interest in the subject, demonstrates the validity of the theory, and leads the pupils to independent work. The subject-matter will be supplemented with elements of contemporary physics as required by the contemporary development of science and technology, which must be taken into account in the education and training of future middle-rank technicians, too.