Emerging Problems in High-School Chemistry' MORRIS M E I S T E R High School of Science, Bronx, New York
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HESE are days when all of mankind is eagerly scannmg the horizon for the coming of a better world. As citizens we are watching for the emerging problems of living in a world a t peace. As teachers we are scrutinizing these problems in order to find what implications there are for the practice of our profession. As teachers of science we are focusing sharply upon the same problems so as to make our special field serve best the interests of democratic life. As teachers of chemistry we are looking deeper into the machinery of science teaching to make sure that every component part makes a maximum contribution to the winning of the peace. The writer must confess, however, to a major difficulty in thinking about the matter. He finds himself using the term "chemistry" when he means "science" or "science" when he should say "cbemistry." It is quite possible that a proper distinction cannot be made. Perhaps it should not be made. It may be that a t the high-school level the distinction is meaningless if pressed too hard. There are many who say that a major defect in prewar high-school science teaching arose from overspecialization in curriculum materials. There are others who argue for still greater abolition of the boundaries that have separated high-school biology from chemistry and chemistry from physics. In any event the emerging problems to be discussed in this paper will apply as well to secondary school science in general as they do to high-school chemistry in particular. In order to gain better perspective for treating the topic, let us examine b r i d y the situation in high-school science teaching before the war broke out. From about 1925 to 1941 we were urging a 12-year science sequence in the schools. It was believed that every boy and girl needed science for effective living. The greatest amount of eloquence in the literature of science education and in science teachers' conventions was devoted to showing that we lived in a world which was becoming increasingly scientific. Not only were the concepts of science altering every nook and cranny of daily existence, but science as a method of thinking and as a way of life was assuming a dominant role in the affairs of mankind. The only way of giving citizens a better appreciation of the importance of science in life was to devote curricular time to it in the schools. There was to be a six-year course in elementary science followed by a three-year course in junior-high-school or general science, to be folloeed in turn by a tenth-grade course in biology, and eleventh- and twelfth-grade courses in physics and chemistry. We all know the extent to Presented before the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society, 108th meeting, New York City, September 12. 1944.
which these eloquent pleas succeeded. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, only a small fraction of bighschool graduates had had either chemistry or physics. A slightly larger number had had a course in biology. About 50 or 60 per cent of high-school graduates had pursued a year's course in general science. In the very best school systems, less than 37 per cent of the students were graduated with a two-year course in science. Less than 12 per cent were able to include three years of science and about 3 per cent succeeded in squeezing in a four-year science sequence. The course in general science has never included much chemistry, and the course in biology included even less. An examination of the high-school cbemistry course itself reveals a diversity of aim;content, and method that shows great uncertainty concerning ways of meeting individual needs, vocational needs, professionalneeds, or the needs of general education. This state of affairs is so recent that all of us have vivid recollections of reasons for the small science enrollment in high school.. Every study of the problem pointed to the crowded high-school curriculum. There just were not enough hours in the day to include all the courses that seemed important and valuable. There seemed to be no good way of dealing with what might be termed the "vested interests" in the curriculum. No one dared to challenge the desirability of four years of English for every boy and girl. The claim of English in the curriculum was based mostly upon the undeniable need for universal literacy. Yet a considerable portion of the four years seemed to be devoted to abstractions and appreciations in the field of literary criticism. Few people arose to challenge the social studies. It was impossible to deny the validity of history, economics, civics, government, and geography as educational instruments. The modern languages made equally powerful claims to curriculum time. One cannot learn a foreign language in two years of study. Three years constitute a bare minimum, and one foreign language is wholly inadequate. As a result, five to six years of curriculum time were devoted to the language field. Health education is certainly a constant and warrants a t least a four-year sequence. What was left of the high-school day was then parceled out among a large group of bitterly contending subject areas. Among these we find the sciences, competing for time against art, music, industrial arts, home economics, a large variety of business subjects, and many other newcomers in the field of secondary education. The enrollment in the sciences has been low for another reason. By and large, principals of schools, superintendents, directors of guidance, and members of boards of education include few men and women who
are themselves trained in seience. While most of them can readily see vocational and professional values in science courses, they are not likely to be impressed by the general educational or cultural value of the sciences. Indeed, one cannot always blame them after a careful evaluation of some of the high-school work in the sciences. Still another reason for the small enrollment in the sciences is related to budgetary costs. Science teaching is expensive. Laboratories and adequate equipment involve large investments and require costly maintenance. To provide a room in which 30 or 35 boys and girls can carry on individual experimentation requires one and one-half times as much architectural space as does a recitation room for English or for social studies. The importance of cost factors in keeping down science enrollment is well illustrated by experiences a t the High School of Science. Here we have a situation most favorable for science teaching. The school was designed for able science-minded boys. The curriculum is focused upon the sciences, especially the laboratory sciences. The principal, with the support of the superintendent, insists upon a four-year sequence in science. Every student pursues a course which gives him science every day for four years. Furthermore, laboratory periods are double periods, for reasons that need not be elaborated. Now, if the science teacher is not to be given more teaching assignments than the normal 25 periods a week, he cannot possibly carry more than four classes, each meeting six periods a week. The English teacher or the social science teacher or the language teacher can be given five classes, each meeting five times a week. Thus the cost of science teaching becomes 20 per cent more expensive in the eyes of the budget-maker, in personnel alone. Besides, there are additional costs in space, equipment, consnmables, and in the need for providing laboratory assistants. There are other difficulties which arise intramurally. We might mention one which affects teacher morale. The nonscience teacher looks toward the science teacher with something akin to envy. The latter has only four and not five sets of papers to correct, only four rather than five sets of marks to enter, only four groups of individuals rather than five to give attention to. This does not make for a happy faculty. It has often been said that the poor enrollment in science is due to poor courses, or to poor teaching. While it cannot be denied that some enthusiastic and expert teachers have overcome the difficulties enumerated above, the blame for poor enrollments cannot be wholly placed upon poor courses and poor teaching. When the war broke out an entirely new set of conditions was created. The writer can recall vividly a certain day in August, 1942, when General Brehon Somervel addressed the chief educational officers of the nation in Washington. You may recall the world situation a t that time. Rommel was poised a t El Alamein, England was suffering from the blitz, the Japs had overrun the Pacific and were threatening Australia. General Somervel pointed out that we could not win
the war without men and equipment, that modern warfare was chiefly a problem of supplies, communication, and transportation, that we needed millions of tecbnicians, men who knew physics, chemistry, and mathematics, that i t was easy to train men to shoot but that the Army did not have the necessary machinery for teaching men science and mathematics, that there was never a time when the country needed the schools as much as it needed them then. The audience was electrified. Many arose to say that they were ready t o throw any part of their curriculum into discard in order to meet the general's request. "Tell us what you want us to do and we will do it." One of the outcomes of the general's speech was the establishment of a pre-induction training agency in the War Department. Based upon the then-known shortages of manpower and the needs for specialists a t that time, a group of courses was devised as a suggestion for the high schools of the nation. In the beginning these courses dealt largely with the fields of machines and electricity, since these subjects seemed to make the best contribution to a kind of warfare which stressed transportation and communication. However, the War Department made a sharp distinction between courses suitable for the general school population and those desirable for the upper 20 per cent in ability. For the latter group physics and chemistry were recommended. A report of the War Department issued in January, 1944, showed that about 1,000,000 boys, 16 years or older, then in school were studying one or more preinduction science courses. Not all high schools in the country introduced the suggested courses, yet practically all schools introduced more science, adapting the courses in one way or another to meet the emergency. Here in New York City, the Board of Superintendents adopted a regulation which required every boy and girl to take a t least one war course every term during the last two years of high school, as arequirementforgraduation. The war courses included the pre-induction courses recommended by the War Department and added certain other related science courses especially for girls. This increased emphasis upon science in the highschool curriculum has had interesting results. Judging from the reactions of students and teachers in New York City, one can fairly say: 1. That students who normally would not have had more than one year of science have pursued with profit and interest a three-year program in science, 2. That, in the main, teachers have been satisfied with the results, 3. That teachers have been able to retrain themselves for the new subject matter and new approaches made necessary by science teaching under war conditions, 4. That, while science teachers h?ve been willing to give emphasis to physics because the War Department preferred it, many would now like to extend the scope of the materials to include much more chemistry and much more biology than appears in the war courses.
5. That, while the war courses as such will not remain permanently in the science teaching curriculum, most teachers feel that they have learned a more realistic and effective way of organizing their teaching, all of which they hope to apply to the new science curriculum in the postwar period. This emphasis upon science has brought with i t another problem which will soon have to be faced. The fact is that a number of courses in the prewar curriculum were dropped to make room for science and mathematics. While no teachers have lost their jobs, a great many have had to retrain themselves. There is a large excess of teachers of foreign languages and a dearth of science and mathematics teachers. As soon as the war is over, the teachers in excess will quite naturally urge the resumption of the old curriculum. The human factors involved are such that considerable pressures of all kinds will arise. Indeed, they are already being felt. It is difficult for administrators and policy-making boards to consider the matter objectively or to resist the pressures. As in politics, so in education, the path of least resistance is that which leads to a return to normalcy. How to meet this situation will become a major problem for those interested in science education. The resentment of nonscience teachers, whether justified or not, is given strength by another trend, not always explicit or vocal et very real. It shows itself 1.y in the nationwide discussion which urges a return to the humanities and to the fundamentals and essentials of learning. Implied in these discussions is always the thought that science and technology possess no humanistic value. and that an understanding of science is not really fundamental or essential. If we scratch below the surface we would find that many people believe that somehow technology is to blame for the horrors of war. Those who have the best interests of science a t heart must combat this trend. The most effective weaoon is to convince our colleagues that science is the key to the solution of peace problems as i t has been in the problems of war, that science is vital to human values. The impact of science upon our mental and social climate has seldom been as well described as in George W. Gray's recent hook "Science a t War." Opening his chapter on "Science and the New World" he says:
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"As science conditioned the conduct of the war, so science inescapably will affect the structure of the postwar. Many contingencies could mar or poison the peace settlement, but nothing more disastrously than a failure to understand the central place which science occupies in modern civilization. Indeed, the whole hope and probability of a permanent peace will depend to a largeextent on the attitude that politics takes toward the opportunities opened and the limitations imposed by technology."
Another point of view to he stressed is that the climate of science is the climate of democracy. While there have been many efforts to link science with democracy, the uhion has not always been perfect or permanent. Difficulties of definition develop. Rising to confound us is always the fact that our totalitarian eqemy also makes much use of science. When, how-
ever, we relate science and democracy in a symbiosis rather than as a linkage, we can study their interdependence in a new context. The fact is that the climate of science i s the climate of democracy. When one grows sick, so does the other. When one grows strong, the other cannot remain weak. Science in this sense does not exist in a totalitarian world, no matter how assiduously and cleverly its techriical men operate. By the same compelling logic which forces the Hutchins-Van Doren school to look to the past for its sense of direction, we are drawn to science as the key to the future. The conclusion is different because the premise is diierent. Hutchins seeks to educate what is common in man by training his intellect through one subject matter and one discipline. We, too, seek to educate what is common in man. The common element, however, is to he found in his needs as an individual in a dynamically changing society. If our program of universal education gives a focal position to the sciences, i t is due to the strategic position which science has assumed in life. At the risk of appearing to offer a subject panacea for educational ills, we submit that the mental climate of the present and the future requires more and better science instruction for all. Not to give all citizens a better understanding of the part that science and the scientificspirit are playing in the world, is to fail to solve social problems and to create new ones. The citizen who never goes beyond the stage of regarding science as a source of gadgets, magic, and miracles is also a potential tool for a dictator. If 90 per cent of all men and women knew more about the workings of the human body than they do now, we would have a healthier society. If 90 per cent of all men and women understood better the interdependence of living things, our natural resources would be better conserved. By the same token, knowledge of the energy concept is related to the solution of our utilities problem, perhaps even the problem of unemployment. , The same relationship exists between the problem of housing and a knowledge of the materials in the crust of the earth, between gullibility to propaganda and knowledge of different kinds of communication. This series can be expanded indefinitely. While correct understanding is not always a guarantee of desired conduct, one cannot deny that it is a sine qua non of intelligent behavior in a democracy. Hence, we must teach more science to all children. Yet as soon as this idea is presented, an army of the opposition will fly to the attack. They confront such a proposal with all the glaring evils of present-day science teaching: its abstractness, its lack of appeal to the masses, its frequent divorce from real life problems, its overlogical organization, its separation from social significance, its emphasis upon subject rather than learner, its traditional disciplines, etc. There is enough truth in each of these criticisms to justify asking: What kind of science do you wish all to have? A partial answer to this question is, of course, implied in the discussion thus far, but the following rejoinder is
also pertinent: How can we determine what kind of science to teach until we try teaching some science? The sad truth of the matter is that few school systems have science teaching programs worthy of the name. The program in the elementary schools is scandalously inadequate. The junior high schools are making the most of a bad situation. So-called "related science courses" in vocational schools do not even aim a t the contributions which science can make to education for citizenship. Science teaching in academic high schools is spotty and meager. Sequential learning is difficult in an overcrowded curriculum. At few points in o w educational system do we find any great concern for bringing the natural sciences into vital relationship with the social studies or with other real educational school experiences. We do not know what kind of science to offer in the junior high school to children who have had six years of the right kind of elementary science. Nor do we know just what kind of biology, chemistry, and physics would be suited to pupils who have experienced the sequential learning of the preceding nine years. Actually, the course in general science assumes little previous science learning. To a large extent, hiology, chemistry, and physics develop their respective understandings as if pupils never have had contact with science experiences before. Adequate attention to science in the curriculum would bring more and more of the material usually taught in senior high schools, down into the junior highschool grades, there to displace material that will seek lower levels still. There are few science concepts that involve inherent learning difficulties that cannot be overcome by proper methods of teaching. Sequential learning and a planned program will make easy many things that now seem difficult. The fact is that o w present grade-placement of science ideas shows a history of displacement downward in some cases from college to elementary school. The struggle among compartmentalized subjects for what they believe is a rightful share of curricular time is somewhat tragic. No sound educational solution can come from this free-for-all competition. The foregoing paragraphs are in no sense a brief for the "rights of science" to more curriculum time. We do argue, however, for a recasting of the program in such a manner as will make possible a science experience commensurate with the needs of modern living. There is hut one way to achieve this. The walls between subjects must be removed. Ideas that belong together must be brought together. Teachers must be re-educated to explore beyond their narrow specialties. Whenever this is done, lots of "dead wood drops away. Duplications are avoided and time is saved. The time is especiklly ripe for this kind of curriculum reconstruction a t the high-school level. As teachers are forced by administrative necessity to teach "out of license," they make new orientations. They discover new applications and enriched opportunities. Horizons are broadened, new perspectives gained. New rela-
tionships are infused into class discussions. The most interesting phenomenon of all is to find teachers "integrating" two or more subject matters through the utilization of an experience drawn from the life needs of the pupil. If we are to consider the curriculum problem realistically we cannot hope for more than three years of highschool science. If that is true, science subject matter must he reorganized. In the process of reorganization we should he much more interested in essential concepts to be included than in titles of courses. In other words we should see to i t that the year of general science includes certain understandings in chemistry that have been neglected in the past and that the remaining two years of science include important chemistry subject matter regardless of the course label to be employed. We .must recognize that a given course cannot contribute equally to the needs of all children. Only about 15 or 20 per cent of our boys and girls are equipped by native ability to make use of science for vocational or professional purposes. For this group a four-year sequence in the sciences is feasible, and in this sequence we should retain the courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. For the remaining 80 to 85 per cent of students, the reorganized courses would seem to be more desirable. While time does not permit an extended description of the reorganized course in-science, we should like t o stress that i t need not abandon quantitative work, nor individualized laboratory work. Although fusions in subject matter are necessary, basic principles of science can still be the core of the course. Experience indicates that we need not fear the effects of integration in the hands of well-trained teachers. We can rely upon such teachers to develop the new methods and the new textbooks that a three-year science sequence will require. Thus a problem emerges in connection with the training of science teachers. The problem must be solved on two fronts: first, in the recruitment of science teachers from the liberal arts colleges and teacher training institutions; secondly, and more important for the immediate postwar period, the development of a program of in-service retraining. On the first front it is essential that the training focus first upon science subject matter. Methods of teaching can wait. It is especially important to avoid too narrow specialization. While the high-school teacher of chemistry must delve deeply into the subject matter of chemistry, he must also he thoroughly conversant with the fields of college hiology and physics. It is important that he be well grounded in laboratory procedures and that he have had some real experience with the method of experimental research. His training in school procedures and classroom methods can be provided most effectively in the practice school and during his apprenticeship under the guidance of expert teachers. In the matter of retraining, we must rely largely upon in-service courses. Here the colleges have an important part to play. The war has undoubtedly brought much new knowledge into existence. Again, subject matter is the first need.
The newer teaching procedures can well be handled in each community through workshop courses led by the more expert classroom teachers. Still another emerging problem involves the status of the laboratory in high schools. Even before the war, individualized laboratory work was giving way to lecture-demonstrations. While the latter are valuable and should be still further developed, many have regretted the rapid reduction and even elimination of experimentation by each pupil in the laboratory. The war has aggravated the problem, since apparatus and equipment have usually involved strategic materials. The situation is deplorable. If science has one outstanding contribution to make to the education of a citizen i t is providing first-hand contacts with natural phenomena. These contacts should provide a setting in which a question is put to nature and in which evidence can be gathered by the student. The procedure by which this evidence can yield an answer is the heart of the scientific method. Unfortunately much of our elementary laboratory work is of the cook-book variety. The student knows the answer by consulting the textbook, long before he goes into the laboratory. Often laboratory procedure consists of forcing the apparatus to give predetermined data. This is a negation of the scientific method and contributes little toward achieving the educational aims which justify science in the curriculum. We must have more individualized laboratory work, but i t must be work of a distinctly different kind. We cannot conclude these remarks on emerging problems without making brief reference to a recent event which to our way of thinking is a milestone in the his-
tory of science teaching in this country. On April 1, 1944, a t a conference in Pittsburgh, the American Science Teachers Association and the American Council of Science Teachers proposed a merger of their organizational resources. Attempts in the past toward unification have not succeeded in enlisting full support. Teachers of science have always had two sources of inspiration. On the one hand there was organized science and on the other hand organized education. Some science teachers allied themselves with the American Association for the Advancement of.Science and others with the National Education Association. This dnalism has kept us apart. Hence our programs and our progress have not been fully effective. The Pittsbuigh conference opened a way for eliminating this unfortunate dualism. A platform of action and a constitution were developed, which fused the best thinking of many science teachers' groups. There was created a single organization, The National Science Teachers Association, predicated upon the prior merger of existing groups and based upon the hope that it would be sponsored by both the A.A.A.S. and the N.E.A. Since then the vote has been held. As president of one of the groups i t is with gratification that the writer can report that the merger and the platform were unanimously approved by 22 affiliated science teacher groups. The vote of the other national group was also unanimous in favor of the merger. We hope that the Division of Chemical Education of this society will support the new N.S.T.A. With essential unity among scientists and science teachers, there is great promise that the problems which emerge in the postwar era will be solved.
