Physics is made much harder than it needs to be by the fact that physics pedagogy is generally terrible. Physics texts start by just throwing equations at you, telling you "This is how it is" with no background or foundation about how we know that this is the way it is, or what it means that this is the way it is. There are some very good popularizations out there (like David Mermin's "Boojums all the way through") but very little that bridges the gap between these and "real" physics books. One of the things on my to-do list is to write a book to try to fill this void, at least for quantum mechanics.
I would on the whole agree that physics pedagogy is generally terrible. But there are a handful of textbooks that do an excellent job on explaining the WHY before the math. Griffith, as mentioned 3 times in the article is famous for his excellent books.
I'm not sure if you have read the Griffith's textbook on Quantum, but I would agree it does a reasonable job of introducing the topics before going too math heavy. The first 2 chapters are devoted to introducing concepts before the "boojums" of chapter 3.
But I wholly disagree with your assertion that QM should be taught _how we know_ before what it means. QM tends to need to get across 3 things to the introductory student, broadly, it's what the tools are (e.g. Schroedinger's, uncertainty principle), how they depart from the classical understanding, and what the mathematical foundations are (e.g. commutators and linear algebra). I think that just teaching the tools, then the math, then the departure is by far the best means of teaching QM. It's just too weird to contrast to classical. Contrasting to classical at all would lend the student to an understanding of QM in terms of classical, that is absolutely the wrong mindset to be.
> But I wholly disagree with your assertion that QM should be taught _how we know_ before what it means.
I didn't assert that, so you can't disagree with it :-) I think the how-we-know and the what-it-means should both precede the math, but I don't have a strong opinion on which of those should come first.
I have not read Griffiths, but I took a quick look at:
and I was not impressed. It seems like a completely traditional presentation, and like all traditional presentations it completely misses the absolutely central role that entanglement plays in the conceptual foundations of QM. (In fact, the word "entanglement" does not even appear in the table of contents! Alas, the on-line text I found at the above link is not searchable so I can't tell you if he doesn't address it at all.)
[EDIT] I've now read more of Griffiths and I would like to revise and extend my above remarks :-) My original criticism still stands, but aside from that the book is actually quite good.
