CORRELATION OF HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CHEMISTRY COURSES' WILLIAM F. EHRET New York University
IF
ONE examines the literature of the recent past it becomes clear that public consideration of the subject we have before us has waned considerably during the last eight years. In the period before the war, on the other hand, we find many spirited discussions and pronouncements of what should constitute a highschool and a college course in chemistry. One finds reports and syllahuses from the National Committee on Science Teaching (1), the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society (8), the College Entrance Examination Board (3), the Regents of the University of the State of New York (4), the Chemistry Teachers' Club of New York (6),and the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers (6). In most of these the main objective was not the correlation or integration of high-school and college teaching, but this subject was necessarily in the background and was presumably carefully considered even though not always referred to directly. In view of the lapse in our discussions it seems appropriate to bring up the subject once again in good old town-meeting style, and the chairmen of our summer conference are to be congratulated upon having listed it as a symposium so that many minds can help bring the problem a little nearer to solution. You will notice that it has been suggested that the college instructors speak on the subject ''What I wish I Could Count On," the implication being that we are to concern ourselves with freshmen who are about to study chemistry in college and who have completed a t least one year of chemistry in high school. Two situations immediately present themselves according as the freshman will use chemistry in some direct way in the f u t u r e l e t us say he is a preprofessional student and will some day he an engineer, a physicist, a chemist, a physician, a biologist, or a geologist-or simply wishes to acquire an understanding of chemistry and the
' P a r t of a symposium on this subject presented a t the Tenth Summer Conferenceof the New England Assooiation of Chemistry Teachers, University of Maine, August 26,1948.
scientific method, in which case we might refer to him as a student of the humanities. My own experience has been mainly with students of the first type and I therefore prefer to confine myself almost entirely to that aspect of the subject, namely, "What I Wish I Could Count On in the Entering Freshmen Who Are Preprofessional." This group of students is the largest group tak'mg college chemistry. It is interesting to note in passing that in the average high school it is the other way around, only a small fraction of those who study chemistry there will ultimately become professionals. Zefore concentrating on the preprofessional group who have studied high-school chemistry I should like to offer suggestions in regard to two minority groups. First, those who wish to be professionals hut have not studied chemistry in high school. It would seem that their place is in the regular college chemistry course with other preprofessional students, or, if the numbers warrant, in a separate course receiving more instruction than the regular one. Then there is a second group, those who have studied high-school chemistry and wish to continue with it for cultural reasons in college. They are interested primarily in the humanities. Most suited to their needs would be a pandemic course in science such as was advocated recently by French (7) and by Conant (8). Returning then to our largest group, the preprofessional~who have taken high-school chemistry and wish to continue with it in college, I would say that the essentials upon which I should like to count when they enter are:= (1) That the student have an appreciation of the service of chemistry to the country. (2) That he have a sound knowledge of a minimum number of fundamental topics and principles in chemistry so that these may be used as a foundation in college. The first five "essentials" are oulled largely from a list of ten givenin reference ( d ) .
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(3) That he have some training in the making of controlled observations and in valid reasoning; in other words, that he have some knowledge of the scientific method. (4) That the student be able to express the results of his observations and his reasoning in concise, clear English. (5) That he will have been helped by his study of high-school chemistry to discover whether he has an a ~ t i t u d efor further studv of the subiect. His h i ~ h sihool course should have h e l ~ e dhim t o "find himself." (6) That his handwriting be easily read. (7) That the student have command of simple arithmetic and elementary algebra (9). The best way to assure this is t o give a refresher course in the last year in high school to those who need it. (8) That the student have acquired some skill in the handling of apparatus and materials. (9) That he understand that dishonesty and science do not go together. These nine fundamental requirements, it seems to me, need little elaboration to a group of teachers of chemistry. Only the second may need some explanation because it mentions a "minimum number of fundamental topics and principles in chemistry" which the student should know. As to what these are, I refer those of you who are secondary school teachers to any one of the syllabuses mentioned earlier (3-5). There you will fmd what appears, on paper a t least, to be a man-sized course in chemistry, covering all the fundamentals a college teacher could wish for. It would appear now as if my task were finished, having stated what one college teacher would like to count on finding in entering freshmen. Yet you will notice that the next item on the program is a question which is aimed directly a t the college teachers, "Why Do You Repeat So Much?," and it is apparently hoped that an answer will be forthcoming. It seems as if the college teacher stands in need of censure for repeating much that has already been covered in the high school. Whether this is so or not depends upon circumstances. I fully agree that repetition can he deadening, stultifying, and demoralizing to the college chemistry student who has had an excellent preliminary training in high school or elsewhere; in fact, in order t o liberate him from boredom and inefficient use of his time, I advocate, as I shall make plain later, excusing him from part or all of the freshman course in chemistry. On the other hand, for students who, although they sat through high-school chemistry, have not retained a sufficient knowledge of it, there is every reason for repetition. They should be required to take the regular first-year college chemistry course. This is exactly what is done in all other course sequences within the high schools and colleges. Proficiency there governs promotion. When viewed in this light it would seem that high-school teachers should be pleased to hear that much of what they taught their students was afterwards repeated in the college course. It serves as
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
an index of the extent to which they have fulfilled their aim of touching upon the fundamentals. Surely no course in elementary chemistry could be given without them. The situation is quite analogous to our own effortsas we learned to move from place to place. As very young children we crept, an action that required the use of our legs. Later we learned how to get along more rapidly, and in a rather different manner, but we still used our legs! So it is with the names, elementary facts, and laws learned in high-school chemistry. They need to be used throughout the college course as well in order that a more comprehensive structure may be built upon them. All of this brings me to the "free-for-all" question on the program of this symposium, "How Can We Get Together?" One obvious way to integrate the work of the high schools and colleges is to have rigid syllabi and curricula, universally adhered to throughout the land. Corresponding to these there would be a fixed starting point for college chemistry, following, not repeating, the high-school course. There would appear t o be no greater difficulty in "getting the two'together" than in coupling two Pullman cars, and, as in the train, the student would fmd a smooth passage from one to the other. Yet anyone who is familiar with the diversity of the present high-school course offerings knows that nothing short of a continental dictatorship could bring this about. Moreover, the mere passage of a student through such prescribed high-school courses, perhaps several years before entering college, would give little indication of the extent of retention of the subject matter. Placement examinations thus emerge as the only solution to the problem of "getting together." In a few colleges and universities, entrance examinations in chemistry, sometimes combined with arithmetic and intelligence tests, are used to determine whether a student who has had a course in high school shall he placed in one college chemistry group or another. I n many instances even this formality is dispensed with, and those who have had preparatory chemistry are thrown into one section while those without go into another. These plans of segregation have one important pedagogic advantage, they put those with like educational backgrounds together, and they are probably worth retaining wherever the number of students warrants them. The schemes have a number of disadvantages, however. First, the latter plan cannot possibly turn out two groups of students equally skilled in chemistry unless those who have had highschool courses are purposely retarded or given fewer hours of instruction. I base this conclusion on the many reports in the literature (10,1i, 13) t o the effect that high-school chemistry has a definite "carry-over" into college chemistry. Secondly, they do not spare the superior student from the ennui that tags him throughout his freshman course. And lastly, and this is significant from the viewpoint of getting the high school and the college together, there is no academic reward for the efforts of the high-school teacher nor for the accomplishments of his excellent students.
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DECEMBER, 1948
And it seems to me another desirable use can be made of proficiency examinations given upon entrance to college. The tests can he used to determine which entering freshmen are sufficiently prepared to advance to a second-semester course or to skip first-year college chemistry altogether. As most of you know, such a proposal is not new. If we go back in the literature some twelve years we find Anihal and Leighton (IS), a t Stanford University, advocating that students who have taken second-level courses in high school he excused from the first-year course in college. In my own institution we are often confronted with students of this type due to the fact that we are located rather close to the Bronx High School of Science and the Brooklyn Technical High School. No doubt similar, well-prepared high-school students can be found in many parts of the corntry. Garrett (14) has described a plan in effect a t Ohio State University, under which all students who have had high-school chemistry are given an opportunity to show by test whether they deserve to be granted advanced standing in college chemistry. About 10 per cent qualify and start immediately with the second quarter's work; a few are even permitted to begin with the third quarter's work. Garrett states that credit by examination is given in a number of other colleges and universities, among which he cites, the universities of Buffalo, California, and Illinois, Syracuse University, Mills College, Antioch College and Muskingum College. Another interesting observation which he makes is that most of those who qualify for advanced standing become the best students in the university. Many variations of this procedure for allowing course credit to students with excellent preparation are possible. l~lexibilityexists a t both ends, in the nature of the placement examination and in the extent to which advanced credit is given. The present author has proposed the following variation as a practical one. Students entering college with A grades in their high-school chemistry are permitted to take one of the American Chemical Society's General College Chemistry tests (16). If their scores are a t least as high as the average obtained by regular students after one year of the college course, they are permitted to advance directly into qualitative analysis or organic and are given course credit for general inorganic chemistry. This plan of granting a full year's credit meets with the approval of the chairman of the Committee on Professional Training of the American Chemical Society, and thus it may be expected that it will not interfere with the accredited standing of a college or university. I am glad to say
that the aforementioned scheme, perhaps with minor modifications, will he put into operation a t New York University during the coming year. In summary, then, may I state that there seems to be only one scheme in vogue which actually integrates, or "gets together," the high-school and first-year college chemistry teaching programs. It is the one which grants credit by examination and gives advanced standing to those who are deserving of it. Its advantages are several : (1) It increases the efficiency of high-school teaching, for both students and teachers realize that their work will not he discounted when the student gets to college. (2) It increases the efficiency of college teaching in that it removes from the beginning classes those who would find them tedious and it projects these students into advanced work, thus permitting them to take a larger number of higher-level courses before receiving the bachelor's degree. (3) It does not reduce the flexibility of high-school teaching. I t will, for instance, not interfere with the trend that one reads about which is said to be in the direction of making the high-school course more about chemistry and its relation to living than it has been in the past. Such steps will be taken with the full knowledge that the course will not prepare many students who will achieve advanced standing by examination when they enter college. It is my opinion that the "credit by examination" plan warrants extension far beyond the limited number of institutions that now employ it. LITERATURE CITED (1) EBEL,R. L., J. CHEM. EDUC.,17,249 (1940). (9, TA;J
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(3) rbid., 17,443 (1940) (Syllabus). (4) Syllabus in Physics and Chemistry (revisionof September, 1938). State Education Department, Albany, New York. (5) Syllabus distributed to themembers. 1941. (6) ReportpftheN.E.A.C.T.,41,27,74(1939). (7) FRENCH, S. J., J. CHEM.EDUC., ~ 5 , 2 1 4(1948). (8) CONANT, J. B., "On Understanding Science," Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1947. ('1 GARREm, ilnnc\ A. B.,AND H. FAwcETPz Ohio 233 ,10=e,.
P, M, J , CHEM. EDUC. 571 (1933), (11) CLARR,P. ~ . , l b i d .1~,285(1936). , ' (12) ROSENGREN, J., School Sci. and Math., 43,162 (1943). (13) ANIBAL, ,-- F. C., AND ?. A. LEIGHTON, J. CHEM.EDUC.,13, GLAsoE
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(14) Gmrett, A. B,, ibid,, 25,24 (1948), (15) ~ d ~ ti^^ ~ service, ~ ~ 15 ~i York23, New York.
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