What Has Happened to Physics Class? A Parent’s Perspective
Last Tuesday, my daughter brought her physics homework to the kitchen table and sighed. It was a packet about projectile motion, and every page looked the same: a grainy diagram of a ball launching off a cliff, a box for the formula, and forty blanks to fill in. She had already done twenty problems and had the glazed look that I remember from my own worst math drills. She asked for help on number twenty-one, and as I leaned over the paper, I noticed she hadn’t written any units next to her answers. “You dropped the meters per second,” I said. She shrugged. “The computer just wants the number.”
That comment stayed with me. I tried to remember my own physics class, from a time before the school bought the online homework platform and the lab tables collected dust. We built a cardboard bridge and broke it. We rolled bowling balls down ramps and timed them with stopwatches. We even once tried to measure the speed of a Nerf dart, and the results were so wrong that our teacher spent a full period helping us figure out why. The whole thing was messy, loud, and sometimes frustrating, but I actually understood what a vector was because I’d seen one knocked sideways by a fan.
My daughter’s physics class is quiet. The lab tables are still there, but most days they’re covered with laptops. When I asked her what they did in class today, she said they watched a video about torque and then answered five questions online. She couldn’t explain torque to me in her own words. She could only tell me it had something to do with “rotation” and “force.” She got the questions right, but the knowledge felt thin, like something that would evaporate by next week.
I don’t blame the teacher. The school district changed the curriculum two years ago, and the new pacing guide gives them about two days per topic. There’s a state-mandated final, and the department chair told me that the easiest way to keep scores up is to have the students practice problems that look exactly like the ones on the test. The teacher I talked to at parent night actually rolled her eyes when she said it, but she also admitted that she doesn’t have room in the term for the kind of open-ended labs she used to do. “There’s no time for curiosity,” she said. “By the time we finish the safety talk and set up materials, the bell rings.”
That stuck with me because it’s not just about physics. It’s about what we decide to value in a science class. We’re teaching kids to manipulate symbols on a screen, but we’re not teaching them to look at the world and ask why. Newton’s laws are now text on a slide, not a feeling of being pushed back into your seat on a bus. Every equation is stripped of its messy, physical meaning.
I remember the first time I really understood gravity. My friend and I were throwing water balloons off the playground roof, trying to hit a target below. We missed a lot. But after each throw, we talked about what changed—how far back we stood, how high we tossed, how hard we threw. That was physics. It didn’t feel like school. It felt like figuring something out.
My daughter doesn’t get that experience. Her teacher can’t take the class outside because of safety rules, paperwork, and the number of minutes allocated for instruction. And honestly, even if the teacher wanted to improvise, she has 150 students and one prep period. Building experiential lessons once a week would be a full-time job.
So what can a parent do about it? I asked around and got some concrete suggestions from other parents and a couple of retired science teachers. The first one is simple: ask your child to explain a physics concept to you, poorly. Have them describe what friction is without using a formula. If they can’t, that’s a signal that the homework isn’t sticking. Then you can spend five minutes doing something real—push a book across the table, slide it on a towel, and let them feel the difference. No need to call it a lab. Just mention it casually.
Another practical tip is to use what’s already around the house. The next time you’re at the grocery store, ask your kid why a shopping cart with a wonky wheel drifts to one side. That’s physics. When you’re driving, talk about why you slow down way before a curve in the rain. You don’t need a whiteboard. Just make the connection out loud. The goal is to give them practice thinking about cause and effect in a physical space, which is exactly what their class isn’t providing.
I also learned that it’s worth asking your school’s science department to show you the lab evidence they keep on file. Not the worksheets—the actual lab write-ups. If there aren’t any, or if they’re all from a simulation program, it might be worth raising that at a school board meeting. Many schools have grant money for lab supplies that’s going unused because teachers are too tired to write the request forms. A parent can help by offering to source materials or by volunteering during a lab class. I’m planning to ask my daughter’s teacher if she’d like an extra pair of hands for one day next month.
But I’m also realistic. I can’t turn her class into the project-based science I wish she had. The system is structured around tests, and tests reward speed and symbol manipulation. My daughter is doing fine in that world. She’s learning how to succeed in a system that values the final number. I just worry that she’s not learning how to see the physical world as something she can interrogate, break open, and understand by touching it.
Last night, I told her about the water balloon story. She asked if we could try something like that sometime. I said we could, maybe this weekend with an egg and a sheet of plastic. She seemed mildly interested, which for a high schooler is practically enthusiasm. We’ll see if it actually happens. I’m not sure it will change her grade or her comprehension of projectile motion. But at least it’ll be real.
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