HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CHEMISTRY F. H. EDMISTER, ~ I UNIVERSITY E OP NORTHCAROLINA, CHAPELH ~ L N. . C.
The success or failure to teach chemistry properly in the high school, or anywhere else for that matter, depends obviously upon several factors: the training of the teacher; the preparation and ability of the student; and the facilities in the way of laboratories and equipment. The training of the teacher is summed up in his ability, natural and acquired, to impart instruction to the student, and his grasp of the subject which he is to teach. There are a few "born teachers," but the great majority enter the profession without any divine call to it; and so we have professional courses in the colleges and normal schools which are designed to acquaint the prospective teacher with certain fundamental principles and theories of teaching. In all states and counties a considerable number of such courses must have been studied before a license to teach is issued, the number of such courses depending upon the grade of license sought. The teacher must also have done a prescribed amount of teaching under the supervision of an experienced teacher, who criticises the conduct of his work. There are no exceptions to these requirements. Whether or not the lesson plans of various types are followed later by the instructor, he must have become acquainted with what is conceded to be the best methods of instruction. On the other hand, there seems to be no semblance of a uniform requirement as to the number or quality of courses in the subject matter. This is left to the discretion of the superintendent. Unfortunately. ideas as to the necessary amount of preparation iil this line are so different, and the practice is so varied, that almost any possible situation may exist. The number of hours to be given to chemistry in college, according to several schedules examined, is six. This means that only the elementary courses can be taken in the time allotted to all the work for the four years, and the number of hours prescribed for the professional courses far exceeds that given to the chemistry. I t surely must be apparent to every experienced teacher that no one is qualified to teach any branch of learning until he is a t least conversant with the subject as a whole; and yet here we have a situation where a great part of the teachmg of chemistry in secondary schools is in the hands of teachers who have only a very elementary knowledge of the subject. It is very unfortunate that so few of our B.S. graduates in chemistry enter the field of teaching in the secondary schools. One reason, if not the chief reason, for this is the impossibility of registering for both the required professional courses, and the subject courses in chemistry which the student feels he must take, in the four years a t his disposal; so he must choose between the two. If he chooses the teachers' course he will be deficient in knowledge of his subject; if he chooses the subject courses he 2153
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is eliminated from the high school, and either goes into industrial work or into private school teaching where the requirements do not rule him out. The poorer student goes to the high-school job. In these days of progress and advancement, the up-to-date high school attempts to ape the university and add course after course to the cumculum until i t is overloaded with all manner of strange and unrelated studies, and the student is dismayed a t the array presented for his assimilation. Quantity and not quality is the goal, and the student arrives, let us say, a t the time and the place to take up the study of chemistry but knows very little about arithmetic beyond the multiplication table, and is unable to grasp the essentials of the subject. When this combination occurs, a poorly prepared teacher and a poorly prepared student, it is not strange that the "problem of the problem" is most easily solved by the simple process of elimination, and the student meets this stumbling block for the first time in his class in the university. The value of the use of problems in teaching chemistry can hardly be over-estimated; but for a college instructor, the attempt to use them with students who flounder around in fractions, percentage, and proportion, generally results in the despair of both. A student who has not learned to apply the simple principles of arithmetic wiU have a difficult time with chemistry. There is another consideration which has a bearing upon the teaching of chemistry in the high schools in many localities, which perhaps can best he expressed in this way: many universities are not fortunate enough to have a sufficiently large teaching staff to divide the freshmen into divisions of those who have had a course in high school, and those who have not. The mixed class is then unavoidable, and unfortunate, particularly for those with some knowledge of chemistry. It is the usual experience that these students, or some of them, will assume that this knowledge will carry them through a t least half of the first term without studying; and when the awakening comes it is too late to recover the lost ground. It is noticeable that the less the actual knowledge, the greater the assumption. There is considerable criticism in regard to the teaching of mathematics in the secondary schools, and judging by the lack of ability in the students in chemistry there would seem to be some ground for the criticism. Be that as it may, there are many college instructors who would like to see more time spent in the high school upon arithmetic and algebra a t the expense, if need be, of chemistry, leaving that to the college. The results would almost inevitably check with those found a t Syracuse ( I ) ; viz., that the high-school grades in mathematics gave a better index to the ability of the student than the grades in high-school chemistry. Given a good thorough ground work in simple mathematics, the understanding of the principles of chemistry becomes a relatively simple matter.
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The writer knows that these remarks do not apply to all high schools, nor to all universities. Undoubtedly in some sections the interrelation is satisfactory, but in other localities there is room for improvement along these lines and it is the hope that steps may be taken to make these improvements. Literature Cited MAUDEB.,"Further Studies on Sectioning in General Chemistry." ( 1 ) SCOPIBLD, J. CKEM.EDUC.,7, 117-26 (Jan.. 1930).
