Question

Here is a scan from an old Soviet textbook for school children:

It shows the table of quarks and antiquarks of different generations, colours, spins. The book also includes similar tables of gluons and their interactions with quarks and between themselves. They all are coded in this fancy cake-shape code.

The standard model table includes Z and W-bosons, gluons as well as graviton and gravitino.

What do you think about such manner of teaching physics and in general, what do you think about appropriateness of teaching Standard Model in junior school?

Some other images from the book (quark-gluon interactions, hadron decay):

Illustration in a chapter about quantum parity:

Tha book has chapters about quantum chromodynamics, spontaneous symmetry breaking, quantum parity and so on.

Answer 1

Of course, we don't know the age of the soviet schoolchildren here but I think we can be confident that they wouldn't have the background to understand the quark model. So it's just sterile dogma - empty facts for memorisation.

The crucial point which distinguishes physics, and science in general is that it's experimental. The theory is not taken on trust or authority, in the end it has passed experimental tests. This is the critical insight that school students need to absorb, through doing experiments and seeing how the theory they're taught is anchored in practical experience. Even future theorists need to understand that lesson.

If there is a way to introduce 20th century ideas such as QM and RT in such a way at school level I applaud it, but based on the experience of TV popular science I'm sadly skeptical.