Guest Editorial
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An educational culture medium The trouble with some eminent teachers of chemistry today is that they have forgotten the role of studying chemistry in a university as well as the purpose of the university itself. The purpose of the university is to bring students to experience education. Education may be defined as the creative and imaginative use of learning or knowledge. Chemistry, and the research experience associated with its study, is an eminently suitable route by which the process can be manifest. There are those who would misdirect the study of chemistry in the same way that many of our humanist colleagues misuse the humanities. We see more and more humanists trying to use the humanities to "humanize" students rather than trying to use the humanities as a means for developing an environment in which the educational experience can obtain. Such people promise too much and thus they themselves are the source of a great part of the student's and public's disenchantment with the university. We cannot, and indeed, must not promise people that education, whether it is perceived by means of science or humanities, will cure society's problems. We should not waste the small opportunity we have to bring students to the experience of education by trying to compensate for the actions of a compulsive mother. Prof. R. B. Woodward once said that the chemist must work very hard to get to a position where he can be lucky. This is all that we, as educators, dare say. We must work hard so that if education can occur, it will have the opportunity to do so. Much of the current student activism stems from the frustration which results from having been promised too much. A specific example of the consequences of forgetting one's purpose is the chaos resulting from allowing the "inmates to run the institution" in the name of establishing participatory democracy in university affairs. The usual rationale given is that since administrative and faculty decisions affect students, students should have a formal role in formulating policy. This is equivalent to saying that since Supreme Court decisions about education affect me and my children, I should have a seat on the Supreme Court. To dramatize the asininity of the belief that students must have voting participation in university government, I recently announced for the office of president of the Emory University Student Government Association. The students disqualified me because I was not a student. The actions of the students made it clear that they do not believe in participatory democracy when it infringes upon domains they deem their own, in particular, the running of student government. I would hope faculties and university administrations would have the same sense and courage to take a similar stand in the operation of their affairs and return to the business of education. It is interesting that the Emory University chemistry department is attracting more undergraduates than ever before (about 200 juniors and senior concentrants). This seems to be bucking a national trend and may say something for the attitude of tending to the purpose of the university, namely, education. Prof. Leon Mandell Chairman, Dept. of Chemistry, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. C&EN EDITORIALS REPRESENT ONLY THE VIEWS OF THE AUTHOR AND AIM AT TRIGGERING. INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION.
Chemical & Engineering News
August 30, 1971 Volume 49, Number 35 Letters 2 Page charges Chemical World This Week 3 The Top Stories 3 U.S. economy at midyear 4 Worm blights in Canada, U.S. 4 Fire-fighting chemicals 5 Boards of directors survey 5 Electricity from fusion 6 Revised patent policy 6 High-energy nuclei Industry/Business 7 Concentrates 8 Synthetic natural eas 10 Industry This Week in Brief International 11 Concentrates 12 European CPI slump Government 13 Concentrates Science 14 Concentrates 15 New subatomic particles I echnology 18 Concentrates 19 New route to acetic acid 20 Plasma arc process 21 Synthetic lumber 22 Reaching the students ACS News/People 23 Job market leveling off Newscripts 32 Bloodhounds baffled Cover: Developers of Monsanto's new acetic acid catalyst: left to right, J. H. Craddock, A. Hershman, J. F. Roth, and F. R. Paulik AUG.
30, 1971 C&EN
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