letters Shooting at the Moon
To the Editor: During a recent interview, poet and novelist Robert Graves commented on the effect of science and technology on scientists. His words are worth repeating here: ". . . you might say they (scientists) are shooting a t the moon and evading the human ties of earth." Graves' words have a direct applicability to introductory chemistry courses which I should like to develop here. As Derek Davenport has rightly pointed out [J. CHEM.EDUC.,45, 419 (1968); 47, 271 (1970)], our students have not been learning nearly as much chemistry as we seem to think. This has resulted because we have been "shooting at the moon" from a parking orbit well above the heads of most of them. That we have been slow to discover such an error attests t o our evasion of "the human ties of earth." Down-to-earth discussions with undergraduate students and graduate assistants often serve far better than examinations to reveal lapses in the success of our instruction. An adequate general chemistry course requires more than just going back to descriptive chemistry as Davenport would have us do. We need greatly to increase the efficiency of our teaching in order to keep up with the greatly increased body of chemical knowledge. Films, television, audio-tutorials, programmed iostruction, computers, and other technological innovations can serve to make many of the less exciting (but neces-
sary) aspects of general chemistry instruction more efficient. We must concern ourselves more actively with the development of the most appropriate methods for inducing students to learn various aspects of chemistry. Merely increasing the efficiency of our inst,ructional methods cannot solve all of our problems. Topics for inclusiou in a general chemistry corlrsc must be selected on a rational basis which values thc riceds and interests of students as well as the specialties of the faculty and the structure of the discipline. In order to make such decisions and t o develop techniques which maximize the efficiency of learning we must strongly support the growth of a class of "general chemists" who can devote themselves to a broad view of the chemical profession. The attributes of the general chemist have been enumerated by George Hammoud [Chemical and Engineering News, March 23, 1970, p. 5; March 30, 1970, p. 31 in a slightly different context. His statement that ". . . we will have to think carefully about the relationships between the simple and the complex" in order to adapt chemistry to the style of the future is well taken with regard to chemical education and chemical research. We need to place greater emphasis on complex problems which require contributions from and understanding of numerous specialized disciplines. The functions of the general chemist are non-trivial and will be difficult to carry out. Some of our most
Volume 47, Number 9, September 1970
/
665
talented persons will have to shoot for the moon via the technology of learning and the synthesis of disciplines. Nevertheless, the successful general chemist dare not evade the human ties of earth, his students.
fellow in chemistry(!) run through the hall of a chemistry laboratory, bar of sodium in hand, yelling, "Does anyone know how to get the crud off this stuff?" Thus the situation now would appear to be no worse than it was a decade and a half earlier, although it may have deteriorated a bit from the days when Whistler's belief that silicon was a gas prevented his ever becoming a major general. As many people have observed, all chemistry teachers have a list of topics that they feel must be included in an "honest course" in general chemistry and inLess Theory and More Practical Chemistry variably these are the topics with which the person who proposes the list feels most a t home. My own inability To the Editor: to compose such a list may mean that I am not at home I have waited a long time for THIS JOURNAL to puhwith any topic. Rather than to admit this, however, lish an article such as that of Derek A. Davenport on I claim that almost any topic from the realm of chemispage 271 of the April, 1970 issue. try can be presented in such a way as to instill in the Some students learn chemistry despite their teachers student an understanding of the scientific method and and textbooks and go on to do excellent routine work or to develop his or her reasoning ability. If this is done, research in pure or applied chemistry. The biochemists I do not believe that it should be a serious matter if especially are advancing the science. the semester ends before a topic that Professor X deems It is easier, of course, to light the pipe, rest the feet absolutely essential was ever brought up for discussion. on the desk, and think than it is to take off the coat and I must admit that I would regard as unsuccessful a do some work. general chemistry course from which most of the An illustration of the result of this shift from chemisstudents were allowed to escape without their having try to philosophy occurs in a review of an elementary a reasonably good understanding of the meaning of a organic chemistry on page A304 in the same issue of chemical equation, or without their knowing that silver the JOURNAL. Two chapters are said to deal with chloride is not a pale, green gas. As for the question "bonding and structure." With only one semester to of whether descriptive chemistry can be taught in an get a working knowledge of organic chemistry, the geninteresting and meaningful manner, I can best cite the eral student or major in agriculture, home economics, oft-quoted statement of the Yankee farmer, who, when biology, or some other related subject could not care asked if he believed in baptism by total immersion, less about the explanation of bonding. replied that in fact he had seen it done. As a graduate Chemistry is a practical subject, and before these assistant I observed descriptive chemistry being taught hypotheses take it over completely someone should in a fashion that the students found interesting, and survey the graduates of the past two decades, who are the model provided thereby had a beneficial effect not now working chemists, to discover if they have ever only on my teaching, hut also on my learning. The found any help in their work from these theories of presented descriptive chemistry also served as a supstructure and bonding. port for the exposition of such chemical principles as IRAD. GARARD the theory of equilibrium. In fact, if one were so inclined, there appears to he no reason why descriptive chemistry could not be used as a solid base for the presentation of, mirabile dictu, molecular orbital theory. To borrow an illustration from Bertrand Russell, if many of the people involved in the continuing argument Balancing Descriptive and Theoretical Chemistry of whether to include theory or fact in courses in general chemistry were to extend their approach to the selecTo the Editor: tion of room temperature, they would he attempting to Davenport's account of the graduate student who survive either at absolute zero or the normal boiling thought that silver chloride is a pale, green gas [J. temperature of iron. CHEM.EDUC.,47,271 (1970)l recalled to my mind that sometime in the mid-fifties there appeared in Chemical and Engineering News a letter from a disturbed professor who claimed to have observed a post-doctoral
666 / lournol of Chemical Education
