Chemical Education Today edited by
Jonathan R. Hill University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242
A Call for Contributions to Chemical Education across Cultural and National Borders Jonathan R. Hill Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242
[email protected] It is a truism among chemical educators that chemistry is an international language. Take, for example, Z. M. Lerman's recent claim (1): “A chemist from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the USA, and a chemist from Bethlehem, Palestine...can communicate scientifically to one another without understanding each other's spoken language.” This may be true, but chemical education; the conditions under which chemistry is taught and learned and used;is always conditioned by circumstance. Just like politics, chemical education is always local. Lerman understands this: In setting up the conference Frontiers of Chemical Sciences: Research and Education in the Middle East, Lerman notes (1) that “[A]ll of the negotiations and communications had to be carried out with sensitivity for and understanding of the cultures, religions, and the security issues involved.” When chemists speak their international language;and especially when they teach chemistry;they also deal with the particulars of people, places, and purposes. With this issue, the Journal of Chemical Education begins a column about these particulars: Chemical Education across Cultural and National Borders. This Journal has long been a forum for examining educational institutions and practices in different locales. Most contributions to the conversation, however, have been peer-reviewed articles. We will feature something different here: reflective essays, informed opinions, provocative polemics, and so on. In other words, this column will present contributions arising not from research and experiment but from experience and reflection. A Brief History of JCE and International Chemical Education A forum is a public space for conversation, opinion, and debate. Knowing a forum's past concerns helps you join the current conversations and knowledgeably shape their future. For this reason, it is useful to summarize the prevailing themes of past contributions to the Journal regarding international chemical education. Some themes have been with the Journal since its inception in 1924; others have evolved in response to prevailing historical circumstance. All of them, however, have shaped the current discussion on chemical education and its international importance. The purposes for which contributions are written always reflect their times. From the 1920s to the 1940s, nearly all articles examined chemical education in developed European nations, although a handful examined education in China and Japan. The tone was one of neutral reportage. The assumption was that this Journal, as it looked out toward the rest of the world, had a fundamentally American perspective. If an American wrote an 10
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article about chemical education abroad, it was of the tone, This is what they do in their country; what can we learn from them? If a citizen from outside the United States made a contribution, it was in the spirit of, This is what we do in my country. The authors intended such articles to promote understanding among an international community of chemical educators. The following states the sentiment that many contributions left implicit (2): “Science is international. It, in revealing the truth, should bring about a better understanding among individuals and among nations.” In the 1940s and 1950s, a new strain of conversation developed. Claims for international understanding remained, but some contributions had a political urgency. Consider the times: The world was rebuilding from World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were carving up the world into spheres of influence, and by the late 1950s, it was widely feared that the Soviet Union had overtaken the United States as a scientific powerhouse. One commentator expressed anxiety about the growing quality of the Soviet educational system (3): “The revolution has brought an even worse government [than the Tsarist monarchy] to power, but this government has recognized the need for technical education and the indications are that Russia is turning out more graduate engineers than we are.” Another voiced concern that the Soviet Union was expanding its sphere of influence into vulnerable nations (4): “In a very real sense the Government of India has based its hopes for the future on the belief that science can raise the productivity of manufacturing and agriculture in India sufficiently rapidly so the average Indian will experience some improvement in his standard of living before he becomes so dissatisfied with his lot that he falls an easy prey to the siren song of communism or some other form of dictatorship.” One American educator abroad heard Communism's siren song in Indonesia (5): “[T]he Communist Party is very strong...and some students were boldly sympathetic to it.” Amid these events and fears, chemical education became a player in Cold War politics. The United States founded the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), later replaced by the Agency for International Development (USAID), to help war-torn and developing nations build their social, economic, and educational systems as bulwarks against Communist incursion. These agencies, among other activities, provided funds to send American educators abroad to teach in developing nations and improve their educational facilities. From the 1950s on, the Journal regularly published articles on chemical education in the developing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It was rare, however, that the authors had been born and raised in those places. Instead, most submissions were written by chemical
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Chemical Education Today
educators from developed nations who were teaching and working in host countries. Their articles assumed that science was crucial to the nation's social progress (6): “Everywhere, but especially in the newly developing countries;India, Pakistan, and those of Africa and South America;the education of the young for science and technology is viewed as the key to the ennoblement of human existence through escape from hunger, sickness, and poverty.” If the United States could cultivate scientific education, it would alleviate suffering and help contain the Communist threat. As American educators went abroad, students also began coming to America. Starting in the 1970s, articles began noting the influx of students from developing nations into the graduate programs of developed nations: the Division of Chemical Education even hosted a symposium on the topic in 1976. A summary report of the symposium strikes the notes of international understanding and social progress (7): “Obviously the foreign education was good for the Americans and America, and it is hoped that the American education will be good for the present foreign students, their country, and the world.” But this international outreach also brought new concerns. In the 1980s, the Journal;always published in the United States;began voicing a new strand of nationalistic anxiety, not in relation to a single rival (i.e., the Soviet Union), but in relation to many nations. A 1993 article, the first of a series titled “International Chemical Education”, pointed out that since 1960 the number of international science students enrolled in U.S. institutions had increased 8-fold while the enrollment levels of U.S. students stayed flat (8): “If there is an alarming aspect to the overall enrollment trends, it is not that the number of international students is increasing but rather that the number of U.S. science students is not increasing.” Concerns about complacency in U.S. education have persisted. In 2006, John W. Moore, then editor of this Journal, declared (9): “If we rest on our laurels, a rapidly changing world is likely to pass us by and young people in the U.S. may face poorer prospects than their elders enjoyed.” Now it is 2010, and the themes described above;promotion of international understanding, the influence of the developed world on developing nations, science as a key element of social progress, and U.S. nationalistic anxiety;persist. Those themes are not going away, but this column hopes to add more to our community's discussion about chemical education across the world. What Belongs in This Column? Our intention is for this column to be truly international in scope. Therefore, we would like chemical educators from all over the world to contribute. We want your informed opinions, commentaries, and reflections on aspects of the conditions and the purposes of chemical education where you teach, research, learn, and live. The words conditions and purposes are pretty broad, so it is useful to say more about them. The conditions of chemical education could mean any of the following (and more besides): • Recent developments in local chemical education based on changing pedagogies, instrumentation, or resources • Developments that you want to see in local chemical education • Availability and sources of funding (governmental, corporate, national, international, and so on) for chemical education and their possible effects
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• Access (or lack thereof) to the resources needed to practice chemical education (buildings, chemicals, instrumentation, faculty, staff, libraries, communications) • Government regulation of and intervention in the chemistry curriculum • Ethnic, linguistic, gender, class, and other social conditions that inform how teachers, students, and researchers practice and experience chemistry • Relations among the primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational systems and their ramifications for chemical education • Cultural perceptions of chemists, chemistry, and education
The purposes of chemical education are also rich material for contributions. For what reasons is chemistry taught and valued where you live and work? What individuals, institutions, and interests benefit from the outcomes of such education? Possible topics include:
• Compromises between teaching a general undergraduate chemistry curriculum and a curriculum based on regional needs and interests • Chemical education for the purposes of economic development (agricultural, industrial, information technology, etc.) • Chemical education for the purpose of environmental preservation • Chemical education as it serves the goals of individual advancement, social obligation, and citizenship
These lists of potential topics are merely suggested starting points. They are not intended to be prescriptive nor exhaustive. What matters most is that you contribute to the conversation on the aspect of chemical education you find most worthwhile. If you believe that some intersection of chemical education and national or cultural concerns is worth knowing about, join our forum. Send your ideas;ideally in the form of a 150-word abstract;to
[email protected]. Abstracts can be submitted any time, although earlier is better. Potential authors will be notified by one of four dates (Feb 15, May 15, August 15, and November 15, 2010) as to whether their topic has been accepted for development into a column. Roughly a month later, each author whose topic has been accepted will receive a deadline for when a draft of the submission is due. Final submissions will be between 800 and 1600 words. Photographs are welcome but not required. All materials will be submitted through the Journal's submission portal, Paragon Plus. In parting, here are excerpts from two articles germane to this forum. The first is from a 1952 letter on the conditions of chemical education in Kabul, Afghanistan (10): Concerning the students, many of them come from mud-walled hovels or from filthy tenements made of mud and straw and overrun with rats, scorpions, and even cobras. Malaria takes a bad toll of the students here, so it is difficult for the boys to study well in their homes. In spite of this the students are cheerful and anxious to learn.
The second is the conclusion to a 1958 article regarding chemical education in India (4): A dedication to science and a measure of toleration can and do bridge tremendous differences in political, economic, and cultural background.
The former excerpt is an extreme example of the conditions under which people teach and learn. The latter is a hopeful yet
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tempered articulation of an ideal shared by educators the world over. Chemical education takes place within a constellation of such realities and ideals, and this is your invitation to talk about your experiences with both. Literature Cited 1. Lerman, Z. M. Chemistry and Chemical Education as a Bridge to Peace. In Chemistry Education in the ICT Age; Gupa-Bhowon, M., Jhaumeer-Laulloo, S., Li Kam Wah, H., Ramasami, P., Eds.; Springer: New York, 2009.
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Silverman, A. J. Chem. Educ. 1937, 14, 189-193. Eyring, H. J. Chem. Educ. 1954, 31, 251-252. Vold, R. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1958, 35, 522-526. Warf, J. C. J. Chem. Educ. 1960, 8, 431-433. Maybury, R. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1962, 39, 423. Wotiz, J. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1977, 54, 413-416. Hilderbrand, D. C.; Huckenpohler, J. F. J. Chem. Educ. 1993, 70, 48-50. 9. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 7. 10. Benton, C. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1953, 30, 37. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
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