The ‘Benefits’ of Black Physics Students; New York Times, 12/17/15

Jedidah C. Isler, New York Times; The ‘Benefits’ of Black Physics Students:

"The fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM, are a messy tangle of experiments, misunderstandings, dead ends, insights, collaborations, accidental discoveries, desperation, triumph and the rest of the human saga focused on understanding the world around us.

And physics isn’t just about the dry acquisition, memorization and regurgitation of equations. Think about something as basic to physics as Newton’s laws. Before they can be understood, they must be conceptualized.

Instead of stating “force equals mass times acceleration” and moving on, a good instructor will ply her students with real-life examples of how the application of force to a mass produces acceleration. Students must create relatable examples that allow them to practice and perfect their use of these tools before expanding them out into the larger, untested world.

By suggesting, and sadly litigating, that diversity — and more important, inclusion and equal opportunity — aren’t paramount to the production of new scientific information, we wrongly imply that the most important part of scientific discovery is in the classroom.

The purpose of the classroom is to build a tool kit and to understand what we know in the hopes of uncovering something that we don’t. It’s the door through which we create new physicists. Closing that door to students of color unless they can justify their presence is closing the door to the kinds of creativity that can be shown only after a student has mastered basic skills."