Don't Segregate ! T o the Editor: I was interested in the "Editor's Outlook" in the June number. I have had an extremely interesting experience during the last three months. After teaching forty-one years a t a well-known "higher institution of learning" in Massachusetts, I was fired in 1941 for old age and senile decay, etc. After finishing up two new editions of some textbooks, I was pleased this spring to have two chances of getting back into the teaching game, which I accepted with alacrity. The head of the Science Department of a well-known preparatory school was called to Washington to work for the U. S. Navy. I was asked suddenly, without any preparation at all, to take over three classes in chemistry and one in physics. Since I have never tried to teach physics nor studied it to any extent since 1896, the proposition was probably the hardest one that has ever been put before me. . . . . From the experiences I have had during the last few weeks, I can readily understand the letter on the examination book from the beautiful lassie whose mind was in a complete fog throughout the entire year. The three sections that I had in chemistry were divided in the way that you suggest. The boys and girls going to college were in one division, those who never meant to go further in chemistry were in another division, and there was an intermediate class. The poorest division had a d i e r e n t text, with more pictures and fewer details. The aim had been, as you put it, to tell this class about chemistry, with the realization that they would not want to study chemistry to any extent. When I took the class, only about two out of the thirteen were passing the course, and they had low grades. I have never seen such an uninspired group of students in my life. From my experience with this group, I am sure that your "Utopian ideal" is a sour proposition. Trying to feed pabulum in chemistry is not a wise thing to do. As Wilhelm Ostwald pointed out about forty years ago, chemistry has always been taught to beginners from too low a level. In physics, it is assumed that the students have some grasp of mathematics, but in chemistry it is usually assumed that everything must be made easy and entertaining. Hence so many silly pictures in the texts for beginners, and so many useless films that are sent around in order to interest youth in the "wonders" of chemistry. We had a very fine projector, and I tried showing quite a number of these films based on the idea of "visual education," until one day finally a student asked: "Why do you show us those films? They teach us nothing new and you have a lot of things to explain to us." I had only about seven weeks to work with this poor class. At the end of the first week, I found to my dismay that not a single boy or girl could follow me
well in the classroom. I found that there was absolutely no chemical fact or theory that I could assume to be known. In the remaining six weeks, I gave to the class exactly the same lessons that I gave to the other sections, but taught each lesson with somewhat greater care, and made the written tests a little briefer. I stressed a logical and mathematical treatment. To my surprise, the reaction was good, and quite a few came to me and said: "I am beginning to learn something about chemistry." In some ways the teacher of chemistry should follow the pattern of the physician. He studies the individual case of each patient and tries to prescribe suitable treatment for each. He does not have a single medicine which he prescribes to all. It is d i c u l t in a large class in Freshman Chemistry to study each individual, but if the class is broken up into small recitation sections of not more than 25 students each, a good instructor ought to get to know each student fairly well. It is not usually possible to make every student study enough to pass the course, but this much is positively true: if the student is frank with the instructor and is willing to work hard, it is a poor instructor who cannot teach at least 90 per cent of such students. The instruction has tq be more or less adapted to the needs of the class. Thus I couldn't treat beginners exactly as I would treat postgraduate students a t a college or technical school. If the instructor knows his subject very well he should be able to impart his knowledge to beginners and if he can't, the presumption is that he does not know his subject very well. Of course, some scholars cannot think in words of less than three syllables, but they are not good teachers, for the most part. My thesis, therefore, is this-if the faithful student is in a haze throughout an entire year, the fault is on both sides. The student should have consulted the instructor the moment he began to get into a fog, and the instructor should have found out about the student before many weeks had passed. . . . The secret of good teaching, in my opinion, lies in making the boys and girls work hard to learn the subject and to study intelligently. The poorer boys and girls have to be directed more, but, in the long run, the earnest students are more likely to succeed than the brilliant ones. I have worked several times with students carefully graded into sections, but, on the whole, I have had better luck with classes in which the good and the bad were well mixed. Then, often a slow student will get help from one of his brighter classmates, and sometimes the students can teach better than some of the instructors. The thing that has impressed me most in changing from college to a preparatory school is that many of the suggestions I have read about teaching in the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION were wrong. WILLIAM T. HALL ROCHESTER, MASSACHUSETT~
Ten thousond tons of steel went into the metal tops of the I,OW,000 jars manufactured last yeor to hold cold cream and other ~osrneticproductr.
