EDITORIALLY S P E A K I N G
M a y b e 1'11 make it through the Science Fair season, but I doubt it!" So ends a letter from a correspondent whose lot it is to receive and try to answer letters from students to a leading manufacturer of chemicals. The fact that sometimes our office walls have heard the same lament and that conversations with other chemists in universities and industry have echoed the same sentiment leads us to use this page to try to stab an octopus. First we should set the record straight that we are not advocating the abolition of scienee projects for students. We applaud the principle and endorse with vigor the idea that students use their energies to translate imagination into investigation. The feature "Chemical Projects" now running each month in THIS JOURNAL is an attempt to put the emphasis where we feel it belongs. What we shudder to see is the distortion of this good idea that has often resulted when a poor teacher assumes that this job is done when he assigns a project. Our correspondent wonders if we are not getting "science project happy" in our schools. Do science teachers know what a project really is? Most pertinent of all, "Do the,teachers orient the students properly for doing a project?" His examples point up his questions: A Bfth grade student in s public school was told to make a sundial as a science project. No instructions were given as to how to proceed. She spent one afternoon laboriously crayoning the face of a clock showing 1 through 12 hours, and then a k e d her father where she should place the two upright pieces. I receive many requests for help from students that are stupid, ill-conceived and impolite. "Send me dl you know about ehemistry (chemicals, drugs, sodium compounds, etc.)." "Send me all your information on analytical chemistry (or any other branch of science you oan name)." "Send me something an acids (bases, salts, antifreezes. .)." "Send me all you have on phenol (or any compound, important or rare)." Further, the student is often demanding and insists that we "hurry" as he must turn in his project next week. Many such requests should never h a w been permitted by the teacher. I rarely receive requests from teachers asking what information might he available of value to their students. Further, teachers show no imagination (or control) in suggesting the companies to which students write. It looks as though they seldom direct students to libraries as a first source of information. Some appear to hold that if a student has reaped a. supply of z number of industrid brochures and booklets by sending out postal cards, he has learned something. Another problem is that an educator or scientist will give a talk somewhere (or s. paper will appear in a relevant educational journal) suggesting a particular area for s. science fair project,
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and the teachers hop on the bandwagon. Case to point: Somewhere nearhy, projects in crystal growth and chemical microscopy must have been mentioned recently at a meeting or in a publication. The result has been a flood of requests: "How can I grow large crystals?" "Send me some crystal experiments." "Send me what you know about crystals." "Send me some ~rystals."~
Our own file is thick with similar correspondence (usually forwarded from the business or advertising : offices of THIS JOURNAL) Please give me the equations and the instructions for making all theplasties. I would appreciate any free literature and samples pertaining to PTInYIIIPR. .
Plcnsr send inc m y p:mqhlvrs, lirrmrure, and S ~ I I I I I ~ in W r e g a d tu the ahjvrt 01 rhr roagt.htion pnwesd oi p r o h i r r g svnthrtiv f i l l r w I' 1 wll ~ l . i d yncwpr a n y rnlter~r~l indirectly related to this subject. Please send me pertinent literature concerning the Hydrogen Bond. I will use this for a research project so please use your discretion in sending me literature that will be most useful to me.
Even having made allowance for the perverse independence of teen-agen, we seriously doubt that the teachers of these students bad given rudimentary instructions in how to search for information. We can answer students politely, usually citing references to articles in this Journal located with the aid of cumulative indexes or the collected volume of Tested Demonstrations. We doubt if we could maintain our politeness with some of their teachers. We know we could not be polite with school superintendents who insist that a chemist,ryteacher have every one of the students in his six classes do a project but refuses to equip either laboratory or library with the necessary resource material. Maybe all we have done is to get a load off the collective chests of those who want most to help genuinelyinterested, adequately-instructed budding scientists. We wonld like to go further to make one concrete suggestion: Every course labeled "Teaching Methods in Chemistry" that carries education credit should require the prospective teacher to complete several "Science Fair" projects without the use of a postage stamp. 1 EDITOR'S NOTE:Teachers of crystal-growers must know of the PSSC jewel, "Crystals and Crystal Growing," by Alan Holden and Phyllis Singer, available to secondary school teachers and pupils through Wesleyan University Press, Columbus 16, Ohio. I t h also an Anchor Book (Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N. Y.).
Volume 38, Number 4, April 1961
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