nlgh School Chemistry To the Editor:
Asa highschool teacher, I would like to comment at length on the article by Tony Mitchell ("What Do Instructors Expect from Be~inningChemistry Students?") in the July isRue .- of the ~ o & n a l . A majority of my students do not take college chemistry after having had high school chemistry. This is true even of those who take the honors course. However, I seek feedback from those who do because I believe that one of my jobs is preparing them to survive college chemistry. On reviewing letters and conversation notes, I find that the students from honors chemistry perceive strong training in solving specific kinds of problems including equilibrium and thermodynamics as well as stoichiometry problems to be most specifically useful to them. The specific concepts and algorithms are not as important, they say, as a strong exposure t o the level of expectations. They also state that the expectations of depth and breadth of coverage of facts and concepts prepared them for college even if they did not remember specific facts or conceDts. Those few students who take colleee chemistrv after Laving the lower level chemistry course wiere expecgtions are more limited report specifically that getting used to the level of expectations of college chemistry was the most difficult adjustment for them t o make. This may support some of Mitchell's statements in that you cannot really teach study skills to students unless the environment you establish demands that those skills he used. The other theme that appears over and over in comments from students who take college chemistry is that the quality of college-level instruction is very poor. According to my former students. the ~rofessorsmostlv lecture, often in a disorganized fashion.'lectures are m;st often chalk talk with few or no demonstrations or AV supports and littler or no sense of pacing. Our students perceive that there is little or no effort to obtain student feedback, prohe for understanding, and rorrert student misconceptions. Also, they say that lectures and lahs are, as a general rule, not correlated with eachother and that thereare few or noattempts to help students understand the connection between experiment and conceot..or observation and inference. Finallv. - ~.r o b l e m solving sessions are typically reported as being conducted by TA's who: ial do not care: (h) cannot teach: and (c) do not speak ~ n ~ l i s comments h. like these often precede a comment like "I'm glad I learned this in high school because I sure wouldn't have learned it from my prof or TA in college!'
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968
Journal of Chemical Education
None of my students who have taken college chemistry report that they had to learn stuff they did not need. Another s&ce of information I use in evaluatine what mv students need to know is listening to college teachirs in b u ~ sessions. The list of things students cannot do or do not know that they "should have learned" in high school chemistry is staggering based on such off-hand comments. Mitchell is correct in stating that college chemistry teachers are not completely satisfied with the results of high school chemistry, but my experience indicates that his conclusions point in the wrong direction. I have never heard a college chemistry teacher criticize a high school chemistry teacher for teaching too much! Mitchell would likely have come closer to what I commonlv hear had he combined his "essential" and "of some imGortance" categories in analyzing his data, rather than combining "some importance", "may be important", and "not important", as his discussion indicates he did. I suspect his survey would have been more accurate with a "not essential but very important" category. "Essential" is one of those absolute words that most trained scientists use only with fear and trembling. I believe Mitchell's methodology led him t o false conclusions. degardless of the reasons, a number of studies comparing student preparation (amount and level of high school chemistry) with college performance (grade in chemistry, score on a test, etc.) indicate that taking high school chemistry does help-a lot. All the above d o not address the fact that Mitchell's survev asks the wrone auestion. ITo Mitchell's credit. he recognizes that briefly near the end of his paper.] For high school chemistry, the right question is: "What chemistry should students learn whether or not they take college chemistry or even go to college?" I believe that most high school chemistry teachersconsider that question strongly inselecting their teaching objectives. Because we also helieve preparation for college chemistry requires more than preparation for citizenship (based on information like that discussed above), we usuallv com~romisebetween the two sets of exoectations. itche ell knishes his paper with a series of suggestions. I would alter them somewhat. First, ACS members, both national and local sections, should decide on which chemistrv concepts are essential, a t what level of abstraction, and fo
