Chemical Education Today
Commentary
An Essential Recognition: Two Valid Introductory Chemistries by Gordon M. Barrow What is this chemistry thing that we are trying to introduce our students to in high schools, colleges, and universities? Or, what should students anticipate as they enter a beginning chemistry course? If we aren’t clear on that—even if we don’t all agree—our attempts to improve what we are doing will fail. Currently there are two very different, usually unrecognized, views of what introductory chemistry is. (One or the other of these views is held by teachers who have a great variety of qualifications, experience, teaching situations, and teaching goals.) Only if we are Most teachers and aware of these views can we move beyond the introductory most students see chemistry courses that so many chemistry as an students find troublesome and useless. immense, powerful Most teachers and most body of students see chemistry as an immense, powerful body of accuaccumulated mulated knowledge. In an introknowledge. ductory chemistry course students learn to manage the information and procedures that have become identified with the course. Students profit by this training and by the credentials that show they have made a first step into the society of chemists. Some teachers and some students see chemistry as consisting of the avenues that each of us can take as we try to make sense of a part of the physical world. Each student builds a base of understanding and can then go on to make sense of the idea of atoms, molecules, and all the chemistry that is opened up. As each student makes a start into chemistry he or she gains added respect for reason and for the individual—and appreciates that great legacy from the Age of Enlightenment. These two attitudes to introductory chemistry courses illustrate a general transformation that some academics, like Niel Postman (1), see as occurring in all of society, culture, and education. Acceptance, and then management, of collective knowledge is increasingly important. Individual understanding and making one’s own sense of aspects of the world is less valued. We count more and more on being part of groups that know about things and less and less on ourselves to make sense of things. Students bring their socialization with them when they embark on an introductory chemistry course. By the time they reach these courses, most students have no confidence that they themselves can make sense of a subject like chemistry. They can’t even imagine stepping outside the social mainstream. Whatever the intent of the instructor, these students process what they hear or read so they can manage this course material. They simply screen out any inappropriate attempts made by some teachers and some texts to help them build their own understanding. The opposing attitudes of managing provided material and building an understanding into which new material can fit are muddled together in the minds of teachers and students, and in textbooks and laboratory manuals.
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Students who expect simply to manage information and procedures are held hostage to old-fashioned material that is of value only if its basis is understood. For example, students learn to calculate the percent ionic or covalent character from the formula of a compound and electronegativity values. They recognize this as an appropriate introductory-chemistry question. The object is to assign the covalent or ionic label, or percentage, to the formula. Nothing more. They don’t want to deal with an actual substance and the properties that it might be expected to have. But why do we bother with this calculation, involved as it is with pretty slippery quantities, if it is not part of the bootstrap operation of making sense of compounds and the elements of which they are composed? There are now much better ways to help students enter into the vast world of chemical information and procedures. Continued attachment to material that has its origin in making sense of the chemical world is denying students the chance to Some teachers and work together to develop useful information management tools some students see and cooperative work habits. chemistry as Students who expect the subconsisting of the ject to make sense are sacrificed by the need to satisfy the majoravenues that each ity who just want to learn how to of us can take as manage all this stuff. Look at the first chapter of any of the popuwe try to make lar general chemistry texts. There sense of a part of you find the usual definitions and examples of heterogeneous and the physical world. homogeneous mixtures, substances, elements, and compounds. Very dull, and of use only at exam time. For students who want to go on to make sense of chemistry, we should use this opportunity to make them comfortable with a few mixtures and the names and properties of a few substances. But since the standard presentation treats the management tools, not that which is being managed, we slight the actual mixtures and substances that are the basis of chemistry. Students are hustled past the experiences on which understanding is based and then, of necessity, presented with sets of recipes that now constitute mainstream chemistry. In introductory chemistry courses we must recognize the powerful social forces that form mainstream attitudes. (If we try to ignore them and accept only traditional values we will have about as much success as we would convincing all our students that they should be reading a good book instead of watching TV!) We can make introductory chemistry courses of value for all our students if we accept the legitimacy of the two different views of introductory chemistry. We can purposefully teach the management and social skills that serve the mainstream majority. In high schools, the very successful ACS-supported Chemistry in the Community program is already focusing on the community, or social, aspects of chemistry. Teachers are turning to the Internet for information management–type projects. There is growing interest in modular units and cooperative learn-
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 10 October 1997
Chemical Education Today
ing to support the socialization of chemistry. Ways such as these of introducing students to the collective knowledge of chemistry can be even more effective if scientific traditions are set aside and the distinctive character of new approaches are recognized. What an opportunity for educators, publishers, computer companies, and chemical industry to come together to encourage and support the development of programs and materials for these new approaches to chemistry! We can also, separately, provide avenues to understanding and individual development for those so inclined. What if we could sort out those of our beginning students who want their education to include, or even consist of, developing their own understanding? These students read, they can follow the logic of a presentation, and they want to see the sense of the subject. What a wonderful world for them, and their teachers, if they were freed from the millstone of the mainstream majority. Soon new aids to learning would emerge: textbooks that are not just workbooks, laboratory work that is not just gradable, lecture demonstrations that are not just entertainment. Chemistry, even at the introductory level, could regain its place in the minds of these students as a great scientific adventure. Many obstacles are in the way of acceptance of the two routes into chemistry and the rationalizing of our introductory chemistry courses that could result. Curricula are well
established and prerequisites …most students simply say “chemistry”; teachers, some with their own good pro- have no confidence grams, tend to be committed to that they themtheir own efforts; funding agenselves can make cies, project directors, publishers, and now computer companies, are sense of a subject comfortable, or at least occupied, like chemistry. with ongoing financial affairs; even chemical educators are preoccupied with what we already are doing. All are caught up in the chemical education system—even if, at the introductory chemistry level, it is a mishmash that does little for most students. But we owe it to all those students who come our way to make sense of what we are doing and then to develop the two great avenues that are now appropriate. Then students, teachers, and all the other stakeholders will prosper. Literature Cited 1. Postman, N. Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology; Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1992; Postman, N. The End of Education; Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1995.
Gordon Barrow can be reached at 2095 Thompson Rd., Gabriola, BC, V0R 1X0, Canada; gmbarrow@mail. islandnet.com.
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