provocative opinion Mutterings of a Burned-Out Professor Anonymous
I've been teaching chemistry a t a major university for more than 25 years, and I feel burned out. What I mean is, the ratio of the degree of satisfaction I experience to the amount of time and effort I expend for my students has deteriorated to such a n extent that I just don't feel like doing what I'm doing anymore. My impression is that fewer and fewer students know what i t means to be curious about things, and that this prevents them from accepting the inconvenience associated with learning. Fewer and fewer are willing to stick with a research project when things do not work out the first time around. I just corrected the final exams for my quant course, and one of my *gift" questions on the first page asked whether a solution of sodium acetate in water was acidic, basic, or neutral. Seven out of 14 students thought it was acidic or neutral, and defended their choices in various bizarre wavs. I t was clear from their exolanations that thev still don't even know what the major species are in such a solution. During the course we had discussed the use of indicators; each student had been required (for a n experiment done a s oart of his or her lab experience) to calculate the pH a t the equivalence point in a titration of ammonia with hvdrochloric acid in order to choose a n indicator; we had dine many weak acid and weak base problems in class; we had discussed hvdrolvsis specifically; I had told them the simple mnemonic that a salt of a strong acid and a weak base would produce a n acidic solution; i.e., the stronger member dominates. All this on top of the fact that the phenomenon of hydrolysis had been introduced already and its implications for pH discussed as part of their general chemistry course! I have thought about it long and hard, and I cannot convince myself that students who have been exposed to this much repetition of the same theme without absorption of the fundamental concepts can be described a s being interested in chemistry. It would be nice if the students in my chemistry for nonscience majors classes were to show some enthusiasm for the subject, but I can deal with it when they don't. However, I want my third- and fourth-year chemistry majors to be interested in chemistry! I want my quant students to find satisfaction in reasoning out a n estimate of the pH of a solution. I want my general chemistry students to be curious about how things work, and be willing to go out of their ways to find out about things. The human brain is capable of so much more than the current educational establishment in the United States expects that I simply can no longer accept the status quo. For my upper track general chemistry lab course, I have been usine a n out-of- mint lab text. (the one bv the faculty a t 0berli; College, fbr whose to" do so I a& grateful) because the level of those currently available for the typical general chemistry course are aimed so low. (My search for a challenging lab text revealed that other departments write their own general chemistry lab books for the same reason.) For mv auant course, I use R. W. Ramette's out-of-print book cagkn, with gratitude for his per-
mission to do so), because there is simply nothing available that can come near it in dealing with activitv coefficients. in particular, and in flat-out competence in-the material presented, in general. Whv is it that texts that are aimed a t students who are interested in and motivated to study chemistry go out of print? I t is clearly that the market for such books is too small. I have never felt the slightest obligation to try to interest students in chemistry. If they are interested, I will do everything I can to help them achieve their goals. If they are not interested, why do they say they are? If they are not interested, why don't they major in something else? Why do they spend more time telling me how important it is that they pass this course than they do studying the material and working problems? Can it be true that our universities are filling up with students who are majoring in subjects in which they have no interest? I n my experience, it is true in the field of chemistry I do everything I can to convince such students that they would surely be.happier doing something else, and that changing majors should not be associated with a sense of failure. The efficacy of this advice mirrors that of my lectures. The students never listen. They seem to see the field of chemistry solely as a way to make a living, and the courses a s some kind of rite of passage that has nothing to do with learning. The same mind-set operates on the belief that payment of tuition and more-or-less regular attendance orettv " much euarantee credit for the course. Some have abandoned tlhis belief after failing the course, onlv to reolace it with a certitude that their flunking it twice woufd be a n injustice for which the teacher coullbe taken to court. Aside from their failure to assimilate fundamental concepts in chemistry, I can submit another piece of evidence that most of my students are not interested in chemistry: the alacrity with which thev sell their chemistry texts after completing a course. I used to try to soothe myconscience, upon requiring a n expensive physical chemistry lab text, with the idea that it represented a valuable addition to the student's library. However, I discovered recently that this notion is simply a nostalgic pipe dream of mine, and nowadays I require a less comprehensive, but soft-covered and much less expensive, lab text. Students lose less money a t resale time. I think a large oart of the oroblem I describe orieinates in the approach to formal education experienced by students before thev get to colleee. Arecent feature in our citv newspaper deschbed the Kring of a high-school math teacher on the East coast because too many students had flunked her courses. To the argument that they had not learned the required material, her principal replied that the primary goal of a high school education was to make students feel good about themselves. I n spite of a court battle that included the support of many former students who readily admitted that they deserved to flunk, the teacher was fired. According to the article, she is currently
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waitine on tables in the town where she used to teach mathematics. I am verv much afraid that the ooint of view exmessed by this principal is not a minority opinion in the formal education structure in this countrv. One of the students my quant class has who missed the "hydrolysis boat" based his choice of career on a hieh school science proied dealing with the environment.ke attended a special school for better-~re~ared students, and I am quite sure his science teach& W& enthusiasticmd well-meaning. He is thorouphlv convinced that he is a buddine scientist and about himself, so that our ~ &coast t high feels school principal could point to him with pride as a prime example of what our schools should be producing. Nevertheless, this student has never learned how to study, and, based on his final exam in quant, has absorbed shockingly little of the conceptual material associated with aqueous solutions. I think he is genuinely confused by his poor performance but places responsibility for it more on me than on himself. Being forced to deal with students who are inadequately prepared for the quantitative and conceptual thinking associated with chemistry, and who show no signs of being interested in chemistry, is a genuinely depressing experience for me. I chose teaching a t the university level as my
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career, but what I have been doing lately bears almost no resemblance to what I consider university teaching. The fact that the administrators of my university are better described as business people than as scholars is not a source of encouragement for positive change in the foreseeable future. Several years ago a colleague in our biology department left the university to take a nonacademic position, for the particular reason that he did not like the direction in which higher education in this country was moving; namely, what amounts to the replacement of scholars with MBA's in university administration, and giving the latter the power to make decisions that have serious consequences for the ability of faculty to perform their responsibilities as they see them. I think he was absolutely right, and things have only gotten worse since he left. Our universities are filling up with undergraduates who have a mistaken idea about why they are there, and their positions are being strengthened by administrators that see them more as assets than as thinkers. It has reached the point now that too many students are not carrying their ends of the load, and too many professional "educators" spend too much time analyzing, and documenting, and strategically restructuring, and. . . As my students say when the bell rings, "Ahrnottahere!"
