EDITORIALLY SPEAKING Encouraging Creativity There are two principal prohlems in the education of a chemist. One is to provide him with a reasonably full background of knowledge of previously established facts. These in essence are the vocabulary or working tools of his profession. The second is to stimulate to the fullest possible extent whatever creative ability or capacity for original thinking he may have. The problem of teachmg the factual information in a stimulating way, correlating the vast body of knowledge of chemistry with theory wherever possible and making the material interesting and stimulating rather than a dull recitation of facts, is a difficult one. Experienced teachers use many devices to achieve this end, recognized as desirable by all. I wish to deal primarily with the second objective of st,imulating creativity. Everyone who has answered a child's questions of "how" and "why" knows that the average intelligent child has a strong streak of curiosity. Our prohlem in education is to stimulate that curiosity, to help develop it into creativity, and to avoid dulling the student's mind by concentrating on solved prohlems and standard answers. There are mechanisms for doing this a t every level of education. At the elementary and seccondary school levels, students can he encouraged to undertake original projects, based upon whatever knowledge of the subject. they have acquired a t the time. Beginning in college, seminars dealing with current research and experimental problem to which the answers are unknown can he offered, and by the junior and senior year the student often has a stacient background of knowledge to undertake an original experimental research prohlem. By the graduate years, encouragement of creativity becomes the major problem in t,eaching a t the highest
level. In addition to encouraging the student to think for himself in his program of doctoral research, various devices that require the student to use his capacity for creativity can be incorporated in the curriculum. One that has been adopted by a number of universities is the substitution of the "proposition" for the oral or written examination at the highest level in the student's major field. Such a "proposition" by the student is the statement in writing of an original research problem suitable for experimental (or sometimes theoretical) study, with a review of the literature background and an outline of the method to be used to solve the problem. I n defense of the"propositiou" before a committee of the faculty, the student commonly is required to defend the originality, practicality, and significance of the problem that he proposes. This device has the advantage of requiring the student to think originally while he is studying for his highest level examinations, rather than simply trying to absorb the information in his major field so that he can reproduce or use it in his examinations. Long experience with the plan has shown that it is an excellent one for showing which students have developed farthest and have the greatest originality and scientific sophistication a t the time that they present their "propositions." I believe that all students benefit greatly from this experience, and that it helps to instill good habits of reading the original literature, which the creative chemist must contmue to do throughout all of his professional life. All experienced teachers will be familiar with many devices for stimulating creativity; my object in these remarks is simply to call attention again to the importance of focusing a large part of the educational process on the stimulation of creativity. Most of us regard this as the chemist's most valuable asset. C. COPE ARTHUR
ARTHCRC. COPE,1961 President of the American Chemical Society, is a natural for that position. For years the Societv has been cdline on him to do battle with such crucial problems facing chemists and chemistry its pukcatians policy and professional training standards. In spite of a. busy life as an administrator, he manages to resonate between his officeas head of the MIT Department of Chemistry and his organic research laboratory. His work in the latter won him the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry in 1944 and Columbia's Chandler Medal in 1958. A Hoosier by birth with collegiate training at Butler, he earned his doctorate at Wisconsin and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Haward. He taught a t Bryn Mawr and Columbia before assumine his p resent ~osition at MIT. His comments here are an apt underscoring of his view on the resl job of chemical education reported in C and E News, September 18, 1961.
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Volume 38, Number 12, December 1961
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