I Q: As a college chemistry professor, exactly what is it you are trying to do in your classes? A: To teach chemistry, of course. As well as I possibly can. Q: What chemistry? A: You mean what topics? Well, naturally it depends on the course: freshman, organic, physical, or whatever. Q: But what specific kinds of things do you want your students to learn? Give me some examples from any of your courses a t all. A: Well, you know. Things like how to balance a redox equation, how to do stoichiometry, how to calculate the free energy change of a process, how to construct a molecular orbital diagram, what the structures of coordination compounds are, and so on. Millions of things. I guess all the things I was taught in my chemistry courses when I was a student-hut thoroughly updated, of course: changing emphasis, dropping the obsolete, adding new viewpoints and so on. Q: You're teaching all the things you feel you yourself now have to know in your own practice of the modern chemical profession, is that it? A: Well, not all the things, of course, hut in general, yes. Chemistrv can he defined a s what a chemist does. can't it? SO in teaching chemistry I feel I should teach what I (and mv chemical colleagues all over the world) do. Anything wrong with that? Q: No, I think that's just fine. But from the examples you just gave me, you're teaching not just what a chemist does, hut precisely how he goes about doing it. Sometimes, apparently, in great detail. You're teaching not just what stoichiometry is and how fundamentally important it is to what chemists do-and indeed to what Mother Nature herself does-hut you're teaching precisely how to go about counting up the millimoles in a wide varietv of suecia1 cases, aren't vou? And vou're teaching n i t just'the beauty' and power of thermodynamic concepts but, I'll bet, preciselv how to calculate the rotational entropy of an-ideal gas molecule. And you're teaching not only the astounding dynamic architecture of electrons in molecules, but exactly how to construct a molecular orbital energy diagram for almost any simple molecule which comes along. Aren't you? A: Now wait a minute! I feel I'm doing both. Sure, 1 give them all the details I think they can absorb. But in demonstrating dozens of kinds of stoichiometry or thermodynamics or molecular orhital problems I'm actually showing the students firsthand the fundamental importance of these things. By actual example. What other way is there? And then after the lectures, when he works things out for himself in his labs and in his assignments, each student experiences for himself, in a personally meaningful way, the beauty and the power and all that jazz you're talking about. Q: Come on now. Do you really think so? Do you really think that that's the way it happens? For more than one or two of your most perceptive and creative students, that is. Do you really think that, for the others, appreciation and awe of the wonderful machinery of Nature dawn brightly upon them as a direct result
provocative opinion of their performing large numbers of chemical manipulations, whether in problem assignments, in exams, in recitations or in labs? While they're grinding out problem after problem, nailing down one new principle after another? Is that really the best way to light the spark of true understanding and appreciation in their minds? A: But what more do you expect me to do than to teach them, as well as humanly possible, and by making use of all the modern techniques a t my disposal, what I myself know how to do: to do chemistry-to manipulate the moles and free energies and molecular orbitals and space groups with the facility I myself have achieved? What more can he asked of a teacher? Q: Don't you honestly think you have anything more to offer your students than the mechanics of how to practice the trade of chemistry? A: Like what, for instance? Q: Let's forget chemistry and look a t engineering for a second. Why do you suppose we teach engineering in our colleges? I'm sure you'll agree that nobody takes eneineerine courses in colleee for anv reason other than that Le intends to go our into the world and practice enaineerine- after he rraduates. Riaht? . A: I guess so; sure. Q: Now let's consider whether chemistry is in the same category as engineering. Apparently we think not, because chemistry courses are prescribed for students majoring in all sorts of things, from engineering to physical education to philosophy. There appears to be some underlying presumption that there are cultural, or affective, or general educational values-call them what you will-in taking chemistry courses even if one's not majoring in it. And yet, from what you tell me, you're giving all your students a practical course in how to be a professional chemist. Is that really what 80% of your students either want or need? Won't graduate school be time enough for that? To me, what you're doing is just the same as if your students had signed up for a course in the understanding and appreciation of great classical music and then found themselves being badgered into trying to play the violin. A: But in your analogy I'm a violinist. I'm a performer. That's what I know how to do, so that's what I can teach. I'm not a music critic or an aesthete or a patron of the arts, and I'm not a damned philosopher-of science or of anything else. Again, I have to say: I teach what I can do. They can get the other stuff somewhere else. Q: Let me ask you something. How long have you been a professional chemist? Since you got out of graduate school, I mean. A: Oh, about twelve years. Q: And what have you done in those twelve years? A: Well, a couple of years as a postdoc. Quite a hit of teaching. A fair amount of research. And I spent a couple of years in industry before I got my first academic appointment. Q: And you've also spent time talking with innumerable colleagues all over the country, and attending A.C.S. meetings, and sewing on committees, and contemplatVolome 52. Number 3, March 1975
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ing your scientific navel for a whole sabbatical year, and in general doing a prodigious amount of reading on and in and around and about chemistry and on science in " eeneral and on science's effects on society. .. and on and on? Sure. That's all part of the game of being a chemistry professor. What are you getting at? What I'm getting a t is this: Haven't those twelve years of total immersion in science-teaching it, doing it, living it, talking about it, thinking about it, reading about it-given you insights and realizations and understandings and sparks of perception which you didn't have when you left school as a green Ph.D., stuffed full of calculations? I don't know what your research specialty is, hut if you've done research in thermodynamics, for example, or even if you only taught it for several years in a row, isn't that when the universal beauty of some of the thermodynamic concepts struck you, rather than hack when you were cramming it in in undergraduate or graduate school, writing partial derivatives deep into the night? Isn't it only later that you had those flashes of perception, those special insights which, for example, related in your mind the concept of entropy with human aging, or people's misunderstanding of probability theory with racial prejudice, or the radioactive decay law with population dynamics? In short, haven't you gained a n awful lot of hard-won generalizations in those twelve years which add special kinds of meaning to the details you learned in school? All I'm saying is that I think there is something more you can do for your students that you're not doing now. Maybe you can give them not only the ability to manipulate, to perform chemistry, hut to revel in its universality, to appreciate the simple crystalline truth of some of its concepts, its interrelationships with other sciences and even with the social sciences and the humanities, to appreciate its value to mankind, not only for the technology it spawns, hut as sheer cultural activity. You have a lot more than facts in your head; you have insight. Why not pass it on to your students? But it took me years and years after school to see some of these things for myself. There simply isn't time to develop them properly in the series of specialized courses we have to cover. And don't forget, these are only twenty-year-old college students we have in our classrooms. The kind of intellectual maturity you're talking about comes much later in a person's life. It's futile to try to rush it. Is it really? What if I told you that by some magic shortcut you could give your students such insights and appreciations right now, without their having to go out and he chemists for twelve years? Because we know damn well, don't we, that eighty percent of your students are not going to he chemists. At least they're not going to become PhD's and professors and then spend twelve years putting it all together as you did. And don't tell me you're already giving them some of these appreciations and insights. You yourself didn't
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get them in school for all your formulas and equations, and neither are they going to get them as long as all you're doing for them is what was done by your professors for you when you were a student: showing them how to do, how to manipulate, how to practice chemistry, rather than how to generalize it, how to relate it to the rest of life, how to appreciate it in it's human and intellectual and societal context. Well, I'll tell you. The great magic shortcut to your students' mature appreciation is the simplest thing in the world: it's for you to present your own mature appreciation to them. Period. On a platter. Full-blown. In so many words. Just the way it appears to you now from your Olympian (to them) vantage point. Simply tell them. In a s many different ways as you can and a t every opportunity. At every excuse for a digression from the formulas and equations. And forgive the hlasphemyeven a t the expense of some formulas and equations. Take the time to say to them, "You know, over the years I've come to realize that this concept embodies real beauty; let me try to explain to you why I think so . . ." Or, "You know, if you stop to think about it, this principle doesn't apply only in the test tube. Have you ever noticed that even living things seem to . . ." Or, "You know, we chemists are in the habit of looking a t such systems from a purely structural point of view. But have you ever wondered what would happen i f . . ." For unless you say this kind of thing explicitly, it will simply neuer dawn on eighty percent of your students no matter how long you make them differentiate and integrate and titrate and calculate. And in the end all you will have taught them is how to practice a n art which they'll in fact never have to practice. How's that for futility? A: OK, OK. I see what you mean. But how on earth can I protect the twenty percent of them who will need to master all the mechanics of uracticing chemistry a s a career? I suppose I'd have to Bet up separate courses or separate sections or something. How can I adjust the sdlahus to do both of these necessary kinds of teaching? Hmm. I wonder if I can actually do some of each in the same course? I guess some of the solid material I now cover is just gonna have to go. Now, how can I make sure that what remains is the most appropriate material for all of them? And how, for heaven's sake, do I distill twelve years of maturity into something which will make an impression on the mind of a freshman or sophomore or junior? What kinds of examples and similies and comparisons can I use in my lectures to tie these insights down to the students' own familiar world? How can I make them really appreciate how much more there is to chemistry than the manipulation of matter and equations? Q: Ah! Now you're beginning to ask the right questions!
Robert L. Wolke University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania 15260
