When I started as a faculty member way back in 2012, I just assumed that all the students knew about unit conversions.  But each year, I end up devoting more time on it in class than the previous year.  In fact, I was in a conversation about units with one of the other physics faculty members yesterday saying we need more unit analysis!  Students just don’t get it.  I know a lot of amazing teachers go bonkers over units.  I am not talking about the higher-level usage of units such as double checking your answer is correct because the units make sense. I am taking about the lower-level usage of units such as converting10 cm^2 to m^2?

My daughter did unit analysis earlier this year in sixth grade (or maybe that was fifth grade its all a blur).  She did well and it was fun.  And I imagine it is a big part of a high school chemistry class, which again I would imagine is more or less required for getting into college and choosing to major in a science.  Granted my daughter goes to a good school district and we should consider that as well (e.g., AAPT Award winning teacher Gillian Winters teaches at my daughter’s would be high school – so maybe we are just good at physics in Smithtown.)  Anyway, I have a ton of questions?

• Is it that students generally don’t understand units?
• Is it that we forget what we learn in grammar school when we get older? I was helping Rosie study Egyptian history last night. The only reason I know who Ra is, is because I watched SG-1.
• Are students lazy?  (sure, but aren’t all of us?)
• Are students tricking their professors so that we don’t cover more material?
• Is it a level of college thing?  e.g., if you teach at Harvard you don’t even speak about units but if you teach at a community college you do a lot of units?
• Is it just about practice?
• Is it about expectations in college? expectations in high school?

Clearly this isn’t limited to just units but to all the math skills.  Teaching calculus in physics I is easy.  I teach it, the students learn it, no problems. But teaching students how to solve for x in an equation such as x^2 -4x+4=0 is harder than I feel it should be. And so many students just don’t get it. Regardless of whether or not the SATs are a required test for college; the material covered on the SAT is still required right?

Then I got this tiktok this morning.

https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdkRGUBt/

Is it something that is generally flawed with this generation of students?  Their grade school teachers?  Teacher expectations?  Are they just not diving in deep enough? This is a very polarizing tiktok see my comment below.**

I don’t know.

I am sure the education and physics education people can point to a paper or two or a million why teaching units is important in college and what to do about it.  Please share them with us non experts!!

** One comment I received directly was about the tiktok. The comment said it doesn’t consider the “importance of diversity and is an illustration of everything that is wrong with education”. The faculty member should first look internally to see what she is doing wrong. I agree with that too. But it is hard when you are at the end of a line in the education system.