CORRELATION OF HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CHEMISTRY COURSES1
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Why Do You Repeat So Much?' DOROTHY W. GIFFORD Lincoln School, Providence, Rhode Island
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WE change the emphasis from the main verb in the subject set for this panel to its auxiliary, do, we create an opportunity for the discussion of many of the problems which seem to demand consideration whenever we study the seemingly senseless repetition to which the student who offers an entrance unit in chemistry is exposed in his first-year chemistry course in college. Why do you repeat so much? The honest secondary school teacher will be the first to recognize that one reason why the colleges must reteach so much material is the uneven quality of the preparation of the candidates who present themselves for admission. Obviously, there must be much poor as well as much good teaching going on in our secondary schools, and reasons for such poor teaching are not hard to find. There are unquestionably some poor teachers in the high-school field: people who are not fitted in temperament, interests, or training for teaching, people who should never have considered the teaching career. Such persons should not take much of our time in a discussion of this sort. We have all met them, in the college field quite as frequently as in the high-school classroom. A far more important factor in poor college preparation is the type of conditions under which the majority of our teachers have to work. These conditions are too familiar to peed more than a brief review. Faced with classes of 30 or 40, with a schedule of teaching hours that would stagger the college instrnctor, with innumerable extracurricular activities, with inadequate laboratory facilities, with laboratory periods too short and too few, the secondary school teacher is driven to "teaching from the text," a practice that turns out students who have had little training in laboratory techniques and a 'Part of a symposium on this subject presented a t the Tenth
Summer Conference of the New England Association of Chemis. try Ternhers, Orono, Maine, August 23-28, 1948.
minimum of that individual attention to which the beginner in any science should be %?posed. The all too large classes are frequently poorly sectioned, and in one division students whose intelligence quotients place them in the genius group may be working with individuals who will probably never be able to attend any college. In those high schoolswhere preparation for college is not the chief emphasis, and where the larger percentage of the student body is not of college caliber, in justice to the population the chemistry course must be adjusted to the needs of the majority. Such adjustment is only fair and right, but students from such classes cannot help but come to the college poorly prepared, and they present a very real problem. To the teacher who is confronted by conditions like those which have just been outlined, some of us must seem to be working under ideal conditions. In my own institution, for example, a girl must make a B grade in college preparatory mathematics before she is permitted to take chemistry, and no laboratory section numbers more than ten. But we, too, have our problems to meet. Trne, we cannot offer the same reasons for poor teaching, but we are constantly exposed to the temptation to do work that results in poor preparation for college. I refer to the College Entrance Examination Board Achievement Tests which come the 6rst Saturday in April. The majority of our students must make a good showing in these tests or we, since our function is teaching college preparatory chemistry, shall eventually find ourselves jobless. After all, if the school is to survive it must first of all get its students into college. Of course, the head of no reputable school says to his faculty, "Your students must do well in the April tests, or else . . .," but the fact remains that if, in the course of years, students do not make good scores in the chemistry tests the impression gets around that the teacher is falling down on his job. Let no teacher fool himself (he fools no one else) by saying, "In my school we do not
JANUARY. 1949
prepare for college boards." ,Of course we do, all'of us. Such preparation may be more or less unconscious, but it goes on all the same. In the back of the minds of us all is the thought that those tests are coming, and we cannot forget how large a part they play in the selection of students for college. Some teachers meet this pressure--and it is terrific-by a simple expedient. They take a good high-school text and proceed to cover just as much material as they possibly can before the fateful Saturday in April. I have heard of one school where there is no laboratory work from Christmas vacation until April in order that all the time may be devoted to the mastery of facts. The College Entrance Examination Board stresses very emphatically that we should not prepare for these examinations, that we should "take them in our stride." My reply to that is, "Yes, of course, hut see to it that your stride is a good swift gallop." With no definite syllabus indicating the factual material to be covered by the test, and with the type of test question used, I have a very strong suspicionhhat a mass of material covered in a superficial way nets higher scores than less material more carefully done, but I have a more profound conviction that this is preparation for college boards and not preparation for college itself. Students so crammed mean real trouble for their college instructors. May I give an example of what I mean by the differences in the types of preparation? In teaching the gas lam, the simplest procedure is to have the student memorize the three laws (although you can probably get by with two-the relation of volume and pressure, and the relation of volume and temperature. The number of students who do not know and cannot work out the relation of temperature and pressure is simply shocking!). Then the pupil memorizes the equation (PVIT) = (P'V'/Tf). He is given problems in which he substitutes values in a memorized formula-an exercise in algebra-and his knowledge of the gas laws is complete, that is, he can solve any problem which is apt to come up on the April aptitude test. This whole thing can be done in a day or a day and a half and is what I call teaching for college boards. Teaching for college preparation is quite different. Laboratoly work and demonstrations can give a quantitative and qualitative basis for the laws, and based on such laboratory material the expression of the laws is worked out. They are then memorized and explained in terms of the kinetic molecular theory. In exercises involving the solution of problems, the student is not permitted the use of the magic formula. In fact, we hope that he does not know of its existence. If he is solving for a new volume, for example, he must study his two pressures, decide whether the change will result in an increase or a decrease in volume, and then set up his increasing or decreasing fraction made up of his two pressures. He will follow the same procedure with his temperature changes. Each problem thus solved then becomes a real application of the gas laws, not an algebraic exercise. But we should not stop here, although this is the type of problem most apt to occur on the
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achievement test. If he really understands the principles involved the pupil should be able with equal ease to solve for new pressures, given varying volumes and temperatures, and for new temperatures, given varying pressures and volumes. Problems involving vapor pressure should offer no difficulty, and correction for differences in level when the gas is collected over water as well as over mercury are not beyond the student's power. There is no reason why this work should be particularly difficultif the student understands and has not merely memorized. (In fact, the chief difficulty with this method may come from parental interest, for all too frequently a student arrives one fair morning saying, "My father majored in chemistry when he was in college, and last night he was showing me a much easier way of doing these problems. All you have to do is just substitute in the formula . . .," and then the real trouble begins!). This is a method of presentation that takes time, actually the better part of a week, especially if we do as we should and include a laboratory exercise in which the gas laws must be used. T i e , unfortunately, is the one thing which, in these days of the enlarged curriculum, has failed to expand. Actually, it takes all the moral courage which I have to follow each year the plan I have just outlined, and I always have a period of conscience searching on the Monday after the achievement tests as I hear of all the things that were on the examination to which mygirls hadnot been exposed. Those of us who teach in the secondary school where the emphasis is on college preparation must remind ourselves almost daily that our primary objective is to prepare our students for college and not for the entrance examinations. If, then, poor teachers, difficult teaching conditions, badly sectioned class personnel, and the pressure of preparing for the College Entrance Examination Board Achievement Tests account for the poorly taught material which comes to the college teacher, is he, on his part, blameless? Surely he is not. 4 second reason for the repetition of so much high-school material in the first-year college course is that there seems to be no agreement on the part of college teachers in regard to what they wish the pupil from the secondary school to know. It does seem as if there must be some minimum syllabus on which college teachers wish that they might definitely count. But what is it? The secondary school teacher is only too willing and anxious to please, but I have yet to see any syllabus formulated within the past five years that takes into consideration the early date of the achievement tests. There is a desperate need for a good statement of the minimum essentials on which the college teacher can really count, a statement formulated by a representative group of college and secondary school teachers and approved by a majority of the colleges to which we most frequently send our students. This should be a syllabus which does not attempt to cover a great mass of material, which leaves to the secondary school teacher time for his pet subjects, and yet one which offers a sound basis on which the college can build. The repetition which takes so much
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of the interest from the college course can then be avoided. A third reason why there is so much repetition is because the colleges take so little trouble to find out what our pupils really do know. Far too many people in the college field believe that the secondary school teacher dies, intellectually and chemically, when he receives his college diploma, that the reason pedple teach in high school is because they are not bright enough to teach in college. Most secondary school teachers are quite willing to admit that they know less chemistry than does the college instructor, but they resent the attitude that their students are worse off than they would have been if they had bad no high-school chemistry a t all. "We have so much to undo, to uuteach," says the college instructor, and without bothering to find out whether or not this is true (a most unscientific procedure!), the povers-that-be herd everyone into the same beginning course and are even a little proud of it. I recognize that this is a criticism which does not apply to a great many institutions where students with entrance credit in chemistry are offered a different course. Such pupils after a brief course which serves as a refresher and coordinator, go on to more advanced work. However, the selection of such students should not be automatic and should hinge on something other than mere exposure to high-school chemistry. In some colleges his score on the achievement test determines what course the student will take. It is my own feeling that a good newtype test, scores on which could be used as a basis for sectioning, furnishes a better criterion. Such a test could be given during Freshman Week, and, if used over enough years and carefully correlated with freshman chemistry grades, could be a useful counseling device. What then can be done? Just how the poor conditions in the schools can be speedily remedied, I do not know. Obviously, a long range program of education of school officials and of parents is indicated. Such a program ought to emphasize some facts little realized by the general public. Too few people are aware of the strain involved in running a successful laboratory period. In many school systems a double laboratory period is considered the equivalent in teaching load of a single classroom period. The public needs to be made to realize that, if anything, the laboratory period is harder work than a class period, that in a beginning science much in-
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
dividual attention with. almost daily written work should be the rule, and that this sort of teaching cannot be done with the present pupil load. By what agency this public education program should be initiated is problematical. The question of the college entrance requirements seems to be less difficult. The College Entrance Examination Board exists, after all, only by virtue of its sewice to schools and colleges and must, in the long run, accede to the demands which they make. At the present time there is no College Entrance Examination Board syllabus in chemistry, and this lack leads to a tendency to try to cover the whole field before April. The New England Association of Chemistry Teachers seems an especially appropriate group to initiate the demand for such a syllabus. Composed as our membership is of approximately equal numbers of college and secondary school teachers (and I understand that in this respect it is unique), it can speak with authority if it can present to the College Entrance Examination Board a syllabus, devised by a representative copunittee, submitted to the membership for criticism and approval, and approved by the chemistry departments of the New England colleges which are so widely represented in its membership. Finally, I should like to see sponsored by this association or by the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION an information service. Some of us are fortunate in teaching in places where there is a college or university. Certainly, the people in such institutions are more than generous in giving of their time and advice. Others are not so fortunate, and for them it might be a service of great value if there were a definite place to which they might turn for help. None of us likes to admit his ignorance, but each of us would far rather bare his difficulty to an understanding colleague than send pupils to college misinformed and incorrectly taught. Until certain problems are solved, the college teacher must continue to repeat much of the material given in the secondary school course with a.resulting loss of time and interest. Somehow the way must be opened so that the high-school teacher may be permitted to teach less material, and we must be expected to do it in a better fashion. Having done so, we must be rewarded by a wholehearted recognition of the worth of our efforts on the part of our colleagues in the college field.
