provocative opinion F. Michael Akeroyd Bradford College, BD7 lAY, U.K. Todav chemical education is a t the crossroads. Pressure from beiow is making it become a school subject for all pupils as part of a program of "Science for All Citizenrr." However, as component of cultural knowledge presented to future citizens of a postindustrial democracy, chemical education has two major problems not encountered by the two rival sciences biology and physics:
a
(1) it is the laboratory-based sciencepar exeellenee-young people
can observe the behavior of bats. balls, automobiles. lifts. insects, and animals and construct hypotheses to a much greater extent than observing the behavior of foodstuffs and synthetic materials. (2) it possesses an intellectual hurdle highlighted by Shayer and Adey' as students progress from purely descriptive chemistry (characterized as the level of concrete operations)to theoretical and deseri~tivechemistrv (characterized as the level of formal operations) When chemistry became a school subject in the 1920'9, the divisions into physical, inorganic, and organic were logical as was the raison d'etre for traditional practical work and the emphasis on the periodic table. The subject was regarded as an intellectually rigorous discipline, comparable with Latin, for nonchemists and also as a suitable preparation for potential future chemistry specialists. Seventy years later, with a different clientele, it behooves us to question some of these fundamental assum~tionses~eciallvas a constructivist approach to general science tearhing is becoming academically respectable. The underlvine. vhilosophv hehind pracrical in an imp&nt paper b y Hodwoik has been sou.2 He claimed:
ue-largely hecause teachers fail I
