I N D U S T R I A L A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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Vol. 16, No. 8
Selective Instruction’” By Alexander Silverman DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, PITTSBURGH. PA.
I
T IS a matter of common observation today that in our large
colleges and universities courses are outlined and curricula planned in such a fashion that all students are expected to complete the requirements in a given time. This assumption is clearly as fallacious as starting several thousand automobiles of different types from New York City on a transcontinental race, expecting them all to arrive in San Francisco a t the same time. Our knowledge of motor-driven vehicles a t once makes it clear to us that no such result can be expected. The differencesin mental and physical equipment in students should make i t clearly obvious that our present system of education is a t fault.. While the Seashore plan of distribution on the basis of ability, the giving of honor courses to superior students, the granting of credit for quality, and the listing of several coursesin the same subject for students according to previous training are in vogue in a number of institutions, it seems that an improvement might be effected by granting credit for quantity of satisfactory work, and advancing students according to individual ability to progress.
GROUPING OF STUDENTS The writer proposes that students be grouped in small sections, not over twenty-five per section, according to their ability to progress. Four sections scheduled simultaneously would probably answer in most institutions, and students could be advanced or retrograded by section as their performance seemed to warrant. For a first classification, the student’s high school record might be considered, and thereafter personal observation on the part of competent instructors should clearly indicate where the student belongs. If the student has not had a high school course in chemistry immediate segregation is possible, and he can still be advanced according to ability.
THELABORATORY THE BASISOF INSTRUCTION
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The average textbook of inorganic chemistry has about forty chapters. The laboratory work covering such a course might be divided into eighty sets of experiments. Under the new plan, a student would be required to complete each experiment satisfactorily, acquiring textbook or reference knowledge relating to the elements or compounds studied in the laboratory. Questions pertinent to the phase of the subject under consideration should be provided, and numerous good texts or reference books should be available for consultation. While a textbook should be assigned for the course, as a general guide, the student should undoubtedly be taught to examine other books. In such a search of the literature the student may find information that will make a special appeal. For example, he may be preparing for engineering, dentistry, medicine, etc., and encounter a book which dwells more particularly on phases of thesubject applying to these professions, and actually wish to purchase this volume to supplement the regular text. Again, he may find books o€ a more elementary nature, which would give him a clearer idea of the subject. The student’s entire time is scheduled for the laboratory. His instructor is with him constantly and is available when he 1This article is printed in THIS JOURNAL for the special purpose of bringing it to the attention of executives and the chemists in industry.
-THE EDITOR 1 Presented under the title, “A New Method of Evaluating Students’ Work,” before the Section of Chemical Education at the 67th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C., April 21 to 26, 1924.
wants information. This gets us back to the close contact between teacher and pupil that prevailed in colleges in the days of smaller enrollment, and gave the student real inspiration. The student should be encouraged to look up information as occasion arises in connection with experimental work, rather than depend on his instructor for continual guidance. If this necessitates his leaving the laboratory to visit a reference room, there should be no objection. The instructor should be able to determine without difficulty whether the experiment has been satisfactorily completed. SYSTEM O F CRBDITS
Assuming that eighty sets of experiments constitute a normal year’s work, one college credit might be allowed for each ten experiments, as eight credits are now granted for a year’s work in most institutions. If Mr. R. can satisfactorily complete sixty experiments in a year, he will receive six credits; seventy experiments, seven credits, etc. If the system of granting credits is not acceptable tqthe institution, it would at least seem better to have the student satisfactorily complete a portion of his course and give him a numerical grade accordingly, than to have him attempt to cover a common requirement and succeed in only 60 per cent of the effort. In other words, credit is allowed for quantity of satisfactory work, rather than for quality, where a certain percentage of failure of effort is assumed. Where new laboratories are in the course of construction, one can easily plan for small rooms with interchangeable lockers, so that a student may be advanced or retrograded according to his ability. While a few lectures on special topics should be presented to the entire group of students, a regularly scheduled course of so many lectures per week does not seem desirable for beginners. The instructor of each section can perform special experiments, now included in lectures, and the small group surrounding him will acquire more information through question and explanation than is a t present the case in general lecture groups where a goodly portion of the group are deficient in knowledge of the material already covered and cannot, therefore, properly interpret the material that is presented. Quizzing and written tests can easily be handled in the laboratory at the discretion of the instructor. The writer would even go so far as to allow a student to complete more than eighty sets of experiments in a year, if he were unusually .capable; in other words, more than eight credits should be granted if the student deserves more. There is little doubt that a man entering industry or the professions after graduation is expected to do satisfactory work. In industry there is no demand for the 60, or 70, or 80 per cent individual; and this is also true of the professions. There are positions for slow, steady workers, and others for keen, rapid workers. Advancement in the business or professional world will depend upon individual ability. Why not, therefore, train t h e student in college on the same basis on which he is going to be judged when he enters the world of affairs? Why not credit him according to his ability and let him understand that a task undertaken must be completed satisfactorily, to obtain the reward? We educators are constantly complaining about the number of failures among college and university students. We are following an instructional scheme which is based on average. It is not expected that the proposed plan will eliminate failure, but i t will give the plodder an opportunity to make good. What is more important, the present tendency to curb ambition in a superior student by retarding his progress will be eliminated, and
August, 1924
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
he will receive encouragement to advance himself according to his ability.
EXTENT OF APPLICATION Opponents to this plan will argue that not all subjects taught in colleges are sufficiently important to every student to warrant a comprehensive understanding. The writer realizes that in certain instances a course is purely informational, perhaps cultural, and does not necessarily prepare one to utilize the knowledge as
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an actual tool. I t is so clearly evident that thorough work, even in a limited number of courses, is exceptional in the higher institutions of learning of our day, that, while the plan may not be favorably received for universal application, it should a t least have serious consideration in the student’s major field. The writer believes that a ten-year trial of such a plan in an institution of learning would unquestionably raise that institution to a level far higher than the average college or university of America holds a t present.
T h e U. S. Geological Survey and t h e Chemical Industry’” By Frank L. Hess U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
A
.FEW years ago a manufacturer engaged in the chemical
industry asked the Survey where calcium chloride could be found on the Pacific Coast. A geologist, in studying the gypsum deposits of California, had visited some of the playa deposits a short time before, and suggested the possibility of calcium chloride in the heavy brine at Amboy, San Bernardino County. The inquirer had been obtaining calcium chloride from deep wells and did not think i t probable that calcium chloride could exist so near the surface. Analyses showed that the water carried 20 per cent of CaC12, however, and a calcium chloride industry now exists on the edge of the playa. Some time ago another man asked for a large supply of the native hydrous ferrous sulfate, melanterite. Only small deposits are known in this country, but it happened that the same geologist had visited an old mine in Bolivia, now unworked, in search of rare minerals known to have been found there. The rather extensive workings are now filling with a beautiful deposit of melanterite. The correspondent was put in touch with the proper person and wrote that negotiations would be taken up at once t o obtain the desired supplies. A chemist wished cesium for research work, and the Survey was able to refer him to the owner of a pegmatite dike in Maine, where was the only known deposit that contained enough of this very rare element to allow any considerable experimentation. Later, a call came for germanium, also for chemical research, and again the Survey was able to place the investigator in touch with the one known adequate supply, this time in the residues of certain zinc ores. Many such examples of the Survey’s opportunities for helpfulness to the chemical industry might be given, and many more if among chemists were to be included those whose chemical reactions depend mostly on heat and dry reagents-that is to say, the “dry” chemists, or metallurgists and ceramists, as distinguished from the “wets,” among whom will be found the majority of the readers of THISJOURNAL. These examples are of rather unusual demands for unusual minerals which the Survey has been able to meet through the observation and deduction of its geologists in their regular work, through their observations even on leave without pay, and through records kept of unusual mineral occurrences. But it is not through observations and record of the unusual that most is ordinarily accomplished; it is through laboriously and systematically observing and recording the commonplace that the Survey is and expects to be most useful. 1 Piesented under the tille, “Mineral Resources for the Chemical Industry,” before the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry a t the 67th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C., April 21 to 26, 1924. 2 Published b y permission of the Director, U. S. Geological Survey.
ANNUAL REPORTS The United States Geological Survey, therefore, in its efforts to be of assistance to both the producer and the user of minerals, has since 1882 issued annual reports, entitled “Mineral Resources of the United States,” in which the results of a canvass of the mineral industry of the country are given by subjects, which include more than one hundred minerals and mineral productspractically every exploited mineral, from platinum and radium to clay and natural gas. An effort is made to give in these articles the principal producers, localities, production, qualities, prices, uses, consumers, in many articles a stated or inferred comparison with foreign deposits, and world statistics. Great effort is made to include in the canvass every locality and all producers, though from their numbers all cannot be included in the text. In this way all minerals and many of the mineral products of the United States, and in epitome those of other countries, are so treated that everyone interested may keep in touch with the general statistics of his industry. CLEARING HOUSEFOR MINERALINFORMATION
In the collection of statistics the Survey comes into touch with practically every American producer and many consumers of minerals and obtains a great fund of information concerning both sources and markets. The chemical manufacturer usually knows well the standard sources of the minerals he uses, but the United States is large and it frequently happens that the Survey in its canvass of the mineral resources learns of new sources, particularly of the rarer minerals, before the manufacturer. These new sources are often brought to the Survey’s knowledge by the producer who is looking for a market, so that the Survey automatically becomes something of a clearing house for mineral ,information, and it finds a ready disposition on the part of producers, middlemen, and consumers to impart as well as ask for information. Among the recent inquiries are requests for names of buyers and users of calcium and calcium-silicon, possible sources of cyanite and sillimanite, and the requests for names of purchasers of various minerals are numberless. Requests both for sources and buyers of platinum and other rare metals are perennial, and a great deal more common than discoveries of platinum deposits. CHEMICAL LABORATORY CONTRIBUTIONS The Survey’s nearest parallelism to the commercial chemist’s work is naturally in its chemical laboratory, and the laboratory has contributed a t least three standard methods of determination helpful to the profession in general-those for the colorimetric determination of titanium, for the determination of boron, and for the determination of small quantities of fluorine. Besides these special determinations Hillebrand‘s treatise on “The Analy-
