Chemical Education Today
From Past Issues
Four Score Years Ago by Kathryn R. Williams January 2004 marked 80 years since JCE’s first issue. Although I’d leafed through Volume one several times, I decided the time was right to take another look at the Journal’s infancy, as well as at other “anniversary” years (1924 and 1944 here, 1964 and 1984 in a future article). Volume one’s scant 240 pages favored topics directly relating to teaching at the high school and beginning college level, with titles such as “What We Teach Our Freshmen in Chemistry” (1), “Making High School Chemistry Worth While” (2), and “The High School Chemistry Course versus the College Requirement” (3). The remaining articles largely dealt with formalities such as minutes of the Division of Chemical Education and abstracts of papers for ACS meetings. As I paged through, however, I came upon an article of a more general nature, “Chemical Education via Radio” (4) by D. H. Killeffer. Killeffer, an associate editor of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, recognized the potential of the new “wireless telephone” (not the device we think of today) for “education which aims at the instruction of comparatively large unsegregated groups of people….” Describing the experiences of the New York Section to set up a series of programs that would broadcast popular talks on chemical subjects, Killeffer wrote that “with fear and trembling” the Westinghouse station manager agreed, provided that “unless interest was shown at once the whole program would be called off.” The series as carried out consisted of ten talks, written by experts in the field, dealing with the chemists’ activities in dyes, medicine, petroleum, leather, rubber, foods, and nutrition. After these ten successful episodes, listeners were requesting that the series be continued. Killeffer encouraged other chemists to “[spread] their influence beyond the class room by this means to the entire nation.” As hints for success, he emphasized the need to maintain audience interest and keep the presentation short, since “one is not likely to know when the audience silently walks out by tuning in something else.” He also warned that speakers may find their jobs difficult without visible audience feedback. “The sensation of addressing an unseen audience … is most peculiar.” For the most part, Killeffer’s guidelines continued to be valid for his successors in then-unknown mass media—TV, videotape, the Web (although sometimes I feel that the Internet makes audience feedback a little too easy). As very early contributors to the Information Age, Killeffer and similar chemists in other cities pioneered the use of “the ether waves as a medium for the dissemination of information.” Turning to the JCE of 1944, I half expected to find a sizable fraction of articles devoted to wartime issues. To the contrary, the distribution of topics was much like today’s: demonstrations, laboratory experiments, teaching methods, book reviews, featured chemicals/processes, historical accounts. But occasional articles such as “Toxic Chemical Ma1090
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Will the time come when we will have fewer and better lectures, or will the personality always be necessary in the lecture halls? Neil E. Gordon (9)
terials” (5), “Detection of War Gases” (6), and “Identification of Gas Warfare Agents” (7) pointed to the importance of chemists both on the home front and in field operations with the Chemical Warfare Service. Also on the home front, Army Colonel Harold W. Jones wrote “The Photoduplication Service of the Army Medical Library” (8) from his post in Washington, DC. His article stirs memories of times before copy machines became necessities in offices, libraries, and retail businesses. Established more than a century prior to Jones’ account, the Army Medical Library housed over a million items by the 1940s. But few scientists or practitioners worked close by, and the long-distance loan service suffered from the usual constraints—single-reader usage and limitation to bound volumes, as well as loss and damage. As director of the library since the mid-1930s, Jones recognized “even before the war, that… [the library] should do everything possible to open its collection to all those who wished to make use of it.” Several other individuals shared Jones’ concern, and they collectively founded “Friends of the Army Medical Library,” which sponsored a free photoduplication service. This private venture later became a government service for the purposes of “sending material of a medical character to members of the Armed Services in the war theatres, furnishing medical material to our Allies to replace that destroyed by enemy action, and giving aid to those engaged in scientific research.” The free nature of the service was as debatable then as it would be today. But, according to Jones, “If we are compelled…to set up a department which shall collect a myriad of small sums…[and] be subjected to inspections and audits without number, I doubt if the service will be any better….” (These are the words of an Army colonel!) Jones concluded his report with a look to the postwar future. His words are as valid today as they were in 1944: “Science and scientific research cannot well be restricted to the narrow boundaries of nationalism, and our plans for the future, nebulous as they may be, have inclined us toward a generous view of the need of international service.”
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Chemical Education Today
The articles by Killeffer and Jones describe two of the many ways that media technology can serve education in the broad sense. Both authors were fortunate that the Journal of Chemical Education stood ready as one of these media vehicles. Literature Cited 1. Cornog, Jacob; Colbert, J. C. J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 5–12. 2. Osborne, C. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 104–109. 3. Stone, Charles H. J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 55–58.
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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Killeffer, D. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 43–47. Nicholson, Douglas G. J. Chem. Educ. 1944, 21, 219–224. Fenton, Paul F. J. Chem. Educ. 1944, 21, 488–489. Zais, Arnold M. J. Chem. Educ. 1944, 21, 489–490. Jones, Harold W. J. Chem. Educ. 1944, 21, 342–343. Gordon, Neil E. J. Chem. Educ. 1924, 1, 42.
Kathryn R. Williams is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, P. O. Box 117200, Gainesville, FL 326117200;
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