L E T T E R S Teachers and Textbooks D E A R SIR:
I have just read the vitriolic review of "Symmetry in Inorganic Chemistry" by Paul B. Dorain (Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc., 1965). I must object to one feature of this review (C&EN, July 26, page 50). This feature is the reviewer's overstated philosophy of a "reader's digest approach to university education." Whereas the subject matter of the book is foreign to me, so that I cannot pass judgment on the book or the substantive features of the review, I feel that the reviewer has missed a valuable pedagogical point by just saying that "this chapter is done much better in that book." Preparing a book on a topic of current interest involves more than just "doing some material better than" previous books. It involves bringing together previous results in a new context. This is not a "reader's digest" approach at all, but it is juxtaposing concepts and results which, although they may have been "done better" elsewhere or earlier, take on new meaning by virtue of their juxtaposition with other concepts and results. The reviewer also offends the concept of a liberal education by snidely suggesting that reading beyond the scope of the course is dangerous. It is dangerous; the purpose of a 20th century education is not solely to make the student a probing searcher of chemical references, learning to make decisions that are relevant to chemistry. The purpose is to learn to make decisions that are relevant to anything and everything he may encounter in all of his life. By buying his A in inorganic chemistry with a D in some other course, as the reviewer suggests, he may have become proficient in choosing between Pauling and Wilson and Orgel, but he may not have learned how to choose in general. It therefore is dangerous, in a larger sense, to overoccupy the time and energy of the student with the kind of decisions the reviewer suggests if a textbook is available which presents the concepts in a structured whole, rather than a shelf of reserve books which present only fragments. In making a parody of the kind of textbook the author and myself have 4
C&EN
SEPT.
13,
1965
in mind by commenting on the general purpose of education, the reviewer has also not mentioned the role of the teacher. For surely the course can be made or lost by the efforts of the instructor, probably more so than by the choice of the source books. A good teacher will be able to bring the student from the level of Dorain to that of Orgel (if such is indeed necessary); the poor teacher may assign a shelf of reserve books and still leave the student unaware of inorganic structural chemistry. Both my comments and those of the reviewer plead for extreme cases which, in truth (I trust), neither of us would use in our own classes. But the book review editors of C&EN should exercise more care in publishing a review that makes so much of an extreme case in education without equally presenting other points of view. These points of view reflect not on the book itself, but on the context in which the book is used; as such, they offer little comment on the pressing question of whether or not C&EN's readers should go out and buy the book. JAY MARTIN ANDERSON
Bryn Mawr, Pa.
D E A R SIR:
I should like to report on behalf of Dr. G. A. Jeffrey, who is away, that his scathing review of this well illustrated and attractively produced but poorly written introductory textbook has elicited only two other letters. One was from a professor in inorganic chemistry, the other from a publisher. Both applauded Jeffrey's condemnation of the book. They evidently had read it. Neither questioned the propriety of criticizing the system along with the book. Of course, that is a matter for the editor to decide. Personally, I feel that objecting to the climate under which such books prosper is very much to the point, and I do not agree that adopting a bad book for a course is sound pedagogical practice. Dr. Anderson seems so offended by the pejorative phrase, "reader's digest approach," that he doesn't consider the possibility of its being correctly applied. The book he has in mind is surely not the one reviewed. A thorough revision by Dorain along the lines
he suggests would be welcome. I assume he has not read it himself. It's really a fascinating subject. I recommend instead "Chemical Applications of Group Theory" by F . Albert Cotton, together with "Symmetry in Chemistry" by H. H. Jaffe and Milton Or chin. By the way, hasn't anybody considered a series of Readers' Digest textbooks to be named "The Structured Whole"? It might create a new dimension in publishing. Pittsburgh,
Pa.
R. D. ROSENSTEIN
Rubber Plant in Romania D E A R SIR:
Your article on Sen. J. W. Fulbright (D.-Ark.) and Firestone's decision not to build a plant in Romania (C&EN, Aug. 2, page 23) did not include a few details which should be of interest to your readers. Any group which disagrees with Sen. Fulbright is invariably stigmatized by that ornament of our legislature as "right-wing," whatever that means. Thus, Young Americans for Freedom, an organization which has been commended from all sides of the legitimate political spectrum (Barry Goldwater, Dwight Eisenhower, and Mike Mansfield, to be specific) and helped significantly in the re-election of Fulbright's respected Democratic colleague Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D.-Conn.), was inevitably slated for this smear, along with some of Fulbright's other favorite intellectualisms such as "vigilante." The fact is that the YAF position on trade with Romania is identical with the policy of the AFL-CIO executive council, expressed in a resolution of March 1, 1965, and the YAF publication on the Romanian deal specifically cited the AFL-CIO statement. The honorable Senator chose to describe YAF's position paper as "the familiar fulminations of the radical right"; oddly enough, he is not asking the State Department to investigate the executive council of the AFL-CIO! Your readers deserve a clearer picture of this Senator whose technique of McCarthyism (or is it Kefauverism?) is so readily used against any company or group which shows the least sign of opposition. There is certain to be mounting pressure on many chemical firms to provide processes and equipment to countries whose governments are unfriendly to the concepts of property and patent rights, free enterprise, and respect for
contract agreements. ACS members should be able to evaluate the smears of Fulbright and his likes so that the chemical industry has some chance of fair play while trying to arrive at reasonable decisions on such questions. JAMES B. PATRICK, P H . D .
Suffern, Ν.Ύ.
D E A R SIR:
. . . I was the first Goodyear repre sentative contacted by the Commerce Department, which in turn had been approached by "Soviet-bloc countries" who wanted our new synthetic polyisoprenes. This fact, that the Com merce Department wanted to supply our advanced technology and products to Romania, was omitted from your quote of Sen. Fulbright about Goodyear's obtaining "from the Commerce Department a license to export syn thetic rubber to Romania." Looking at the complete story from the inside, I am sure that our top management's decision to resist the Administration's overtures was based on ideals apparently unfamiliar to the skeptical Senator. The best interests of free enterprise in a free society will only be advanced by such decisions on the part of American business leaders. I am proud to be associated with an organization that proudly and hon estly places patriotism above profits, loyalty before lucre. F R E D L. LANTING
Philadelphia, Pa.
Lab Work Inspires D E A R SIR:
As a senior undergraduate in pro fessional chemistry at Western Reserve University, I should like to comment on the letters of Dr. Walter Wolf and Hayes Slaughter (C&EN, Aug. 16, page 4 ) . I am hoping to enter graduate school in September 1966. I am very inter ested in both Dr. Johnson's (C&EN, July 26, page 5) and Mr. Slaughter's proposals. However, I think Dr. Wolf's proposal to impose only a year of formal course work after the A.B. or B.S. an excellent one. From the standpoint of one who has undergone three years of college and is about to face five more to a Ph.D., it is disheartening to think of three more years of academic work before being able to devote full time to re search.
There are many, I am sure, like me who knew before they entered college that research was to be their life's work. To be frustrated as I have been during college by being unable to do research during the school year has been a great trial. At times, the only thing that has kept me on the road to my goal—a Ph.D. in some phase of biochemical work—has been the remembrance of my days at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology the summer of 1962 as a lab assistant in forensic pathology. There my supervisor, Dr. J. Amenta, threw me feet first into intermediary metabolism. At first I was all at sea, but with hard study I began to under stand something of what we were doing with the research on hydrazine poisoning. At times it was a thor oughly frustrating project; but the
