David W. Brooks University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln. 68588
I The Status of General Chemistry
I
I. Course content
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a series of papers "The Status of General Chemistry,"pprepared by invitation and designed to bring together the major features and underlying philosophies of general chemistry introduction as pursued in colleges and universities today. Professor Brooks was asked to report primarily on programs involving large numbers of students. He does this in aseriesof four articles. The others will appear in succeeding months. Similar "state of the art" reports on general chemistry in liberal arts colleges and in two year colleges are planned for early 1978.
This series of articles will deal with the status of general chemistry, particularly as it is taught in "graduate" chemistry departments. General chemistry courses serve a multitude of needs. In the general chemistry course we begin to impart college level chemical knowledge and problem solving skills. Also, we further shape already formed student attitudes toward science and toward chemistry. Perhaps most important, we begin identifying and working with those persons who will ultimately replenish our ranks as scientists, chemists, and chemistry teachers. The general chemistry course is largely a "service course," with only a few enrollees intending to pursue chemistry careers. The conceptual nature of chemistry, requiring that one constantly deal with and manipulate abstractions, leads to the perception that chemistry courses are difficult. Unusual administrative problems arise, particularly as a result of the laboratory aspect of the course. All of these considerations, taken together, have caused many graduate chemistry departments to assign a t least one full time faculty member as coordinator of the course. I write from the vantage point of such a position. Two of my biases should be known to you. Chemistry is my "favorite subject." Though education, psychology, management, operations research, and physics are fun subjects, they don't do for me what chemistry does. Another bias is that I am favorably disposed toward using research and development results from education-particularly those dealing with methods-in an attempt to improve general chemistry instruction. Thus, when analyzing an instructional situation, I will frequently go far beyond considering content to get a t the crux of a problem. Content considerations, alone, are much less likely to identify problems in general chemistry than they are in, say, a graduate chemistry course. In as much as many readers will share my first hias, hut not my second, it seems prudent to deal with course content in this first article. Two decades have passed since Sputnik. One has passed since the student riots, the emergence of environmental considerations as a national issue, and the demand for "relevance." Today we stand a t the base of a sheer cliff called the "energy crisis." It is my own opinion that the general chemistry course content has responded well to our past needs, and that it shows every prospect of being appropriately modified to meet our future needs. High School Chemistry Content It is typical that an undergraduate student in a "mainstream" college chemistry course has had high school chemistry. What kind of course has that student had? The New York State Regents determined the content of my course in 1956-57. I t consisted mostly of memorization. I t was a t that time, however, that some new application-type problems were introduced to the "Regents Exam." Most calculations, nevertheless, were actually learned by memorizing algorithms. In those days, if you could do all of the problems on the "last 654 1 Journal of Chemical Education
six Regents exams," you could probably do all of them on the next one. Sputnik ushered in a new age. CBA and CHEM Study brought top notch college teachers together with top notch high school teachers. Their curriculum revisions emphasized concepts to a much greater degree than had preceding curricula. The twelve points enumerated for early discussion in the CHEM Study curriculum give today's readers a clue as to why support for CHEMS has waned ( I ) . Each point concerns "the needs of' the subject; there is no mention of the learner. Implementation of CHEMS required extensive training programs for high school teachers. Somehow these just didn't live u n t o exnectations. External nressures forced some underqialified teachers to use curric&un materials with which they were uncomfortable. These teachers were (and are) better prepared to deal with a curriculum rich in memory work and description, while light in conceptual development and ap~----~ ~
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Teaching cdlege students that have heen successful with a CHKMS high schoc~l
