VOL. 5, No. 10
AN OUTLINE08 PANDEMIC CHEMISTRY
1243
AN OUTLINE OF PANDEMIC CHEMISTRY* JOHN
R . SAMPEY, HOWARD COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
One of the significant developments of the last few years in higher education has come from the demand for cultural or orientation courses in the sciences. Upon no science has this demand been made more insistently than chemistry. Freshman chemistry courses have always been taught with the purpose of fitting the student for advanced work in the subject, although it has been known that only a small proportion take more than one year. A recent ~urve?~' of general chemistry a t ten leading colleges and universities has shown that less than ten per cent of the students pursue further chemical work; this percentage will be even less in the smaller colleges, but of course more in the technical schools. The question, therefore; has been raised if a course designed primarily to meet the needs of such a small proportion can be consistent with our modem democratic ideals of education. The commanding position chemistry has assumed in the industrial world since the World War has increased the demand for cultural or pandemic, .. chemistry. No other subject pursued by the college student can bring him into a fuller appreciation of the industrial age in which he lives. While an examination of modern textbooks of freshmen chemistry reveals a marked increase in the space devoted to the commercial applications of the science, so muchiemphasis is placed upon the strictly theoretical matter that the student fails to v a s p the extent of the revolution chemistry has wrought in modern civilizat~on. A third cause leading to the development of a new type of beginning course may be found in the growing dissatisfaction with the results achieved in the present order. Education tests have shown that our efforts a t drilling chemical theories and calculations into the great majority of the students have been largely in vain. The results of the Powers' Tests2 on ten thousand high-school students from many of the larger cities in the north and east, are sufficient to make the instructor of college freshmen wonder if such an examination of his labors would make a similar showing. The privilege of judging what weight may be given to these tests devised by our colleagues in the department of education opens the one avenue of escape which the teachers of both the high-school and freshman courses in chemistry have been all too eager to follow. Although the need for a change in the general chemistry course is widely recognized, chemical education has been slow in meeting the need. It is
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* Delivered before the Divison of Chemical Education of the A. C. S. at St. Louis. April 17, 1928. W. Haynes, Science, 65, 462 (1927). S. R. Powen, THISJOURNAL, 2, 174 (March, 1925).
not difficult to list some of the reasons. The most obvious objection raised by the teacher trained in the present system is, how can we teach the applications of chemistry to industry and life before the student receives the foundations of theoretical chemistry? That is the major difficulty and the one we have faced squarely in all our experiments in pandemic chemistry. The difficulty is not insurmountable, however; in fact is i t not due more to our point of view than to any innate shortcoming? The authors of the two volumes of "Chemistry in Industry," edited by H. E. Howe, have succeeded to a remarkable degree in presenting industrial applications of chemistry to readers with little or no theoretical training in the science; while the books were written primarily for the use of high-school students in connection with the prize essay contest of the American Chemical Society, they have found-wide circulation among business executives and the cultured public. Why should not their method of presentation be adaptable t o classroom use? Why has it been considered sounder pedagogy to present first a mass of theoretical matter with which the student has had no previous experience and for which he can see no use after he escapes from the course? Is i t not more logical to preSent those facts about the operation of an industry which the student readily perceives should be a part of the equipment of an educated individual in this industrial age, and from this point let his own curiosity gradually lead him into a desire to know more about the why of the processes involved? This is certainly the method by which knowledge of the theoretical principles a t the foundation of many industrial processes was developed r a t first. The educator who follows this plan of presentation will be as surprised by the extent to which the student seeks theoretical interpretations as were the authors of "Chemistry in Industry" in the success of their experiments to interest the public. Another factor retarding the growth of a cultural type of course may be found again in the training of the teachef. The degree of specialization demanded of graduate students in our universities does not leave time for the acquisition of the wide store of knowledge essential to the presentation of the varied material in a course in pandemic chemistry. Active interest in research in a specialized field is vital to the life of the instructor of the advanced courses, and i t undoubtedly makes a keener teacher of freshman work, but the teacher of pandemic chemistry will soon discover that he has had to learn more in one session about industrial applications than he was able to pick up rather incidentally in seven or eight years of university training. One other hindrance has been placed in the path of development of the cultural type of course by those who have never attempted to teach the subject. The criticism is made that such a course is superficial and a "snap." The standard set in any course, however, depends more upon
the ability, training, and interest of the teacher than upon the suhjectmatter. It is one thing tostrive to make a course interesting, and i t is quite another to seek to make it easy. No suhject open to freshmen affords more opportunity to secure real work as the result of stimulating a compelling interest, than the opportunity which presents itself to the teacher of a cultural course in chemistry. Through frequent quizzes and written tests the instructor who means business can quickly discover if a class is letting idle interest take the place of honest effort to comprehend the material presented. In spite o'f these difficulties and apparent shortcomings, many institutions have started experiments in cultural and orientation courses. In a recent issue of Science1, the statement is made that the pioneer course was introduced a t Marshall College two years ago, and that similar experiments are being made at Harvard, Yale, and Cornell. In carrying on correspondence very recently with the Senators of Chemical Education representing the colleges, the author has been surprised a t the large number who displayed active interest in the suhject. Surely progressin this new development of chemical education has been retarded by the failure to exchange .., experiences among those who are engaged in experiments in pandemic chemistry. I t is to help correct this situation that we venture to present an outline of the course developed during the last seven sessions, including three summer schools in which the full course was given. In 1924 Prof. Roger W. Allen divided the freshmanchemistry students at . ;. Howard College into two classes. In one class were placed those students who planned to take mor
