1134
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
MAY,1930
drop of acid may drop off the outlet tube and crack the flask. H I in hot sand is not so good. The writer has found that when a process is minutely written up, with the equations and theoretical considerations, the student is inclined to take the whole thing for granted and feel he has actually done the thing practically. For this reason, only the method is given here to prepare the various salts of iodine and bromine. It is advisable for the student to work out his own equations, but if a bookworm, he can look them all up in the literature.
The Teaching of Qualitative Analysis. When I studied qualitative analysis we used the translation of a book by one Remigius Fresenius, who became famous for his goad work in analysis. He directed that the material to be analyzed be first submitted to a preliminary examination. Shortly afterward, a teacher, I was blessed with a student called Porter W. Shimer, who soon distinguished himself in the same and other ways. When his course in qualitative analysis was a t an end, in advance of the other members of his class, I determined t o see how well he could work. To test him, I mixed some beer, sawdust, street sweepings, and several other like conglomerates, added a trace of arsenic and some other metals and handed them over. Some two days later he made a report showing that while he had identified all the anions and cations present, he had also detected the beer, the sawdust, and several other ingredients. It was a notable report for so young a man. I wonder how many students of this generation would do as well, and I wonder how many modern tents or teachers bother with preli&inary examinations. Is it true that our modern teaching is degenerating and that our boys are losing everything- by losing that intimacy with their teachers which was so common then and so much less common OP CHEMICAI. EDUCATION and laboratories and lecture now? We now have a JOURNAL rooms such as were not then dreamed of, but are we any hetter or as well off as in the days when Mark Hopkins or Thomas M. Drown on one end of a bench and me on the other represented perfection? Methodism in teaching seems t o me like the beating of d r u m s s o u n d , 'but little sense. The good teacher has always been a good and kind man or woman who made friends with the youngsters. There was perfect equality and strenuous work-together. What generous soul can resist such a combination? And how impossible to do without it. Prof. H. E. Armstrong's wonderful paper in the Dec. 13th issue of Chem. b Ind. does not place too much emphasis upon the necessity of moral quality and real attainment in the teacher-and nothing else much matters. The old students who come back t o a lovable teacher, like the late Edgar F. Smith, know that nothing they can possibly give him is an adequate return for the benefits they have received. The impression seems to prevail in many quarters that research qualifications are all that matter much. I was surprised, therefore, to hear Prof. Bradley Stoughton, whose wonderful paper appears in the same issue, say that he thought - ~. the most i m ~ o r t a n t occupation of a teacher was teaching. Boys and girls are easily led, hut they must lave and resped their teacher before they can be led a t all.-Letter by Edward Hart i n Correspondence of Chem. b Ind. ~
