A PLEA FOR MERCY EDWIN L. ROE.LASHSENIOR HIGHSCHOOL, ZANBSVILLE, OHIO In common with many other teachers of high-school chemistry I find myself reading with great interest, hut with some feeling of guilt, the numerous articles in your valuable magazine concerning the objectives of the high-school chemistry course. The feeling of interest is quite natural as we strive by our reading to improve ourselves in the art or science of teaching our particular subject and so place ourselves in better position to put our message across to the student. The feeling of guilt comes as we realize our inability to nearly reach those splendid objectives and high standards so thoughtfully established for us. Certainly as the high-school teacher looks back over the year and considers the case of any individnal pupil, he cannot help but feel that that individual is far from having come up to the desired standard and, despite the fact that the student may have made a good grade in the course, he is woefully lacking in chemical knowledge and that he, the teacher, must be in some measure a failure for not having put the subject across. But is the teacher entirely to blame in a situation of this kind and is he a complete failure? Is there not a chance that the standards themselves are almost impossible of accomplishment and stand in need of some slight revision? Too often the so-called standards are the work of the teachers of college chemistry or of graduate students in education or science presenting an alleged standard as a part of a thesis for an advanced degree. Usually the person, or persons, presenting a standard have never spent a day in teaching high-school chemistry, have no conception of the highschool mind or of the problems of high-school instruction. The emphasis placed on most standards is that of the college and on those things which the college has decided that the college ought to demand of the highschool graduate in chemistry. With this fact in mind let us see why so many college-bred standards are unacceptable to the high-school teacher. In the first place there is the high-school student himself. At the age of sixteen or seventeen he comes into contact with chemistry, making for him, in many cases, his first contact with real science. For his general science, a hodgepodge of consistently unrelated facts gleaned from a dozen scientific fields and assembled by a physicist, chemist, biologist, or astronomer [for,as yet, we have no "general scientist"], is often worse than no scieuce a t all in so far as the orderly, related, and systematic thinking so essential to all true scientific progress is concerned. The student's knowledge of the world is general and the chemical world in particular is infinitesimal and distorted. He has always taken, as do many adults, the manifest gifts of man and nature as his just due and has never stopped to marvel about their source. Cotton, silk and linen, iron, copper and lead, bread, meat, and the thousand of varieties of prepared breakfast foods are something coming from a store but back of that point he is very much in doubt. 1645
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The conception of an orderly universe with its atoms and molecules, molded and formed by the guiding hand of the chemist into the million and one articles a t his beck and call, is, to him, a closed book. "Not to all your students," you may say, "arethesethingsaclosedbook." True, but I am talking now about the average student who comes to us with no particular aptitude or interest for scientific things. And, Mr. Standard Maker, consider on these things and on this material delivered into our hands and do not condemn us too harshly if our finished product seems unable to remember the law of Gay-Lussac or gets a bit confused about allotropy. Of course no one will deny that we should have some sort of standards, but it is my contention that as high-school teachers our first and primary duty is to awaken a sense of appreciation of the past achievements of science, offer a glimpse of some of the things we hope that it may do in the future, create a sense of appreciation of its orderliness and beauty and build within our student that type of mind which can truly grasp and appreciate the accuracy of scientific reasoning. We must point out to our youth that the heroes and benefactors of mankind are not all met on the pages of the history text nor that everything that is worth reading has been set down on the pages of the "classics." When we have done these things we may he able to teach a few chemical facts but, after all, this is a matter easily taken care of by those who take our students from our hands. To do our duty for our students we must never lose sight of the fact that preparing them for college is not the sole, or even the most important, object of our work. Only a small percentage of our graduates will go to college and of these only a few will take more chemistry. The majority of the students will finish their formal schooling when the doors of the high school close upon them at the end of their senior year. It is this big group that we must consider and to them we must give the things that are most likely to prove of lasting intellectual and social worth. What good will it do a girl who enters an office as a stenographer if she can test for the bromine ion but does not know the source of the beautiful dyes which color her dress or that of the rayon fiber of which it is made? Far better for her if she has a broad view of the science of chemistry as a whole and a real and active appreciation of the part chemistry is playing in making her world a more efficient and happier place. Nine months is all too short a time to do more than outline the field of chemistry and to place the student's feet more or less firmly on the edge of that field, but yet to place them in such a way that if the natural aptitudes and inclinations of the student incline in that direction he is in a position to go on and in an orderly, systematic manner make the field his own either by continuing his chemistry in college or technical school or, if his schooling goes no farther, by
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the reading and study of popular scientific literature, an immense amount of which is now available for the interested person. Of course the stndent whose chemistry ends with one year of high-school chemistry will never become a highly expert chemist or chemical authority, or is it necessary that he should. To him a knowledge of chemistry is merely one of those things that he should have to get the best from life and be a cultured and intelligent being. Laws and theories must all be subordinated to the essential facts of things as they are and even then we must glean those facts which are likely to prove of real value and lasting worth. I do not for a minute maintain that a thorough knowledge of the laws of chemistry is not important and if we were preparing all, or even the majority of our students for college, they might well become the objects of our primary interest for a thorough understanding of chemical laws is essential to a thorough knowledge of chemistry. For those students classified by their mates under the general heading of "chemistry sharks" and who are likely to go into chemistry seriously we can and must do more than we do for the average stndent. Conference groups, extra assignments, reference assignments, especially to that invaluable "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics," special work on solubility and solution, opportunity to do work as laboratory assistants; these things and many more will help our outstanding students to lay a broad foundation upon which the college instructor may build. Reference work for chemistry pupils has always seemed to me to be especially worthwhile. The amount of chemistry that we can teach any pupil is very small, even in a four-year college course, but by a liberal use of reference works we can place at our students' disposal the great mass of materials collected and compiled by the greatest chemists of all ages. In this connection I have always been guided by a remark of the'best and most loved teacher of my own school days when he said, "Physics is so big a subject that I can't teach you people much but I can show you where to find the facts when you need them and that, in some respects, is better than knowing them yourself'-a remark which applies with equal force to chemistry. Many teachers seem to hesitate about sending pupils to reference works, apparently under the impression that it implies a lack of knowledge on the part of the teacher. This should not be the case. The best commercial and plant laboratories have the best-equipped libraries which are constantly referred to by the technical staff from the chief chemist down. Why, then, should we deny, or at least say nothing about, the use of reference works to our pupils? Possibly the ideal arrangement for high schools would be to separate our students into two groups of classes. In one group we would put those pupils who have only a very passive interest in chemistry and no
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JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
JULY,1930
expectation of going to college and in the other we would place those pupils who are actively interested in chemistry or who expect to take more in college. Then we might teach two kinds of chemistry; for one group stressing the laws and theories of the science while for the other we would place special emphasis upon the applications of chemistry to everyday life with only slight attention to laws and theories. I n other words we would teach a practical chemistry for those who expect to go no farther in the science and a theoretical chemistry for those who would get their practical applications later. However, such divisions are very difficult to make and might open up even greater difficultiesthan those which we now face. In conclusion, Mr. Standard Maker and teacher of college chkmistry, pray remember that the high-school teacher is facing facts, not theories. We must meet as hest we can the demand for instruction in chemistry from those who are going no farther than high school as well as from those who are going to college. After all our work lies in doing the best we can for the greatest number and if our student enters your college somewhat remiss in those things which you feel essential to one who has completed a year's work in chemistry we beg of you to treat him kindly and forgive us his faults, and our own, if you can. If you cannot, go forth and have a talk with the man who takes your students when you are done with them and gives them their next year of chemistry. Ask him what he thinks about their knowledge of chemistry acquired under your efficient tutelage and then, if he becomes impolite and gives you his honest, unbiased, and truthful opinion, we predict that you will emerge with a chastened spirit and a somewhat more tolerant and kindly feeling toward yoor fellow-laborer in the lowly vineyard of the high school.
