Next year’s curriculum will remove the Physics social justice unit, which asks students “who gets to be a physicist?”
Teacher Moses Rifkin created the unit in 2008 to educate students about how diversity looks within physics and STEM fields.
“We look at who does physics and who doesn’t do physics and why that is,” Rifkin said.
According to Rifkin, the unit took about eight class periods and focused on class discussions. Only students in Quantitative Physics learned it this year. It was the second unit of the year, and students discuss bias, privilege diversity.
“We emphasize that there’s not a right answer, but that the practice of talking to people who disagree with you is really something that’s important in science and in all fields,” Rifkin said.
Director of Upper School Susie Wu believes the unit needs to change in order to better educate students in today’s world.
“DEIB has evolved in our society to a point where we need to take it to another level, where it’s more integrated into the curriculum and not a standalone unit,” Wu said.
According to Wu, the UPrep administration initiated the shift in the Physics curriculum. Wu wants students to know that the removal of the unit does not mean these conversations will not be happening.
“I very much believe that part of UPrep is DEIB. It is part of our mission and part of the learning environment here,” Wu said. “It was never removal of DEIB concepts or skills out of Physics, but I think it is more about how it is currently put into the curriculum.”
Wu points out the “think of a physicist” posters as an example. The posters show a scientist who is a woman or a person of color, challenging stereotypes about what a scientist looks like.
“It assumes a shock value, that a scientist of color is somehow different,” Wu said.
Wu, a former science teacher, recognizes that the time spent on the unit could also be spent on other lessons.
“It might actually allow physics teachers to spend more time on a traditional Physics topic or concept or skill that they might not have as much time for, or they can cover something that they might have cut out,” Wu said.
While Rifkin is “hopeful” to integrate the unit’s material into other lessons, he also believes some topics will be more difficult to discuss without a dedicated unit.
“There are elements of that unit that really only come from a sustained focus that might be hard to replicate if we just sort of sprinkle it throughout the year,” Rifkin said.
While some conversations may be challenging, he still looks forward to teaching students about the subject when he can.
“Talking about the who and the why of who is present in science is really important,” Rifkin said. “If we don’t do it in a single unit, maybe we can find ways to work that conversation out.”
While removing the unit might feel like a step backwards to some students, Wu wants the UPrep community to think of the future ahead.
“One of the things I really love about our UPrep teachers is that they’re constantly thinking about growing, how the students grow, and also how they grow as professionals,” Wu said.
