WTL SYMPOSIUM PAPER
William F. Kieffer The College of Waoster Wooster. OH 44691
I
Sputnik, Trickle-down and Renaissance
When I was asked to share with you some impressions of the status of chemical education during the period from the mid-fifties to late sixties when I held the hlue pencil for the .TO1 . .JRNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION, my recollections ~u,tnedintrlyf o r ~ w dtm thr t h r w ttwns trf my title. '1'he.e ~ c r m.:m\titutc. i u rriwi~viri~re i n the dense lhat a friutn\iriltr is a joining of influences mutually to exert authority. During these vears 1955-1967, this triumvirate certainly dominated the forces bringing great changes to chemical education. "Sputnik" implies the ready and often generous governmenior foundation support during those years for programs designed to improve science education. "Trickle-down" implies what happened to the content of chemistry courses a t all levels. Concepts formerly revealed only in advanced ~~
College, London in 1956. S~utnik The Russians named their first earth-orbiting satellite Soutnik. (travelline companion). Its success in October 1957, followed a mnnth.lat.er by a second, bearing a live dog for ohvsiolncical observation, was seized upon by the news media Hnh coniequently by most American citizens as evidence that those mysterious and sinister Russians hehind their Iron Curtain were pouring science and technology into their youth. After all, they had heaten us into space, so something was drasticallv wrone with science education in the United States. ~ l t h o u r h ' t h eresr~ltingfurore inevitably searched more for scapegoats than causes, it did have the effect of shaping puhlic awareness into puhlic concern. The result was a very considerable orovision of funds, largely through NSF, to support programs designed to improve science education. Prestigious names and institutions (for example, Zacharias a t M.I.T.) convinced public and scientists alike that something had to he done. We chemists were more than ready fur the support of fund granting arencies. The Division of Chemical Education had been running institutes and conferences to get high school and college chemistry teachers together for five years before NSF soonsored its first summer oroeram. . . Usuallv these meetines had minimal support from a host institution or local chemical industrv. When the Ford Foundation came to ask the ACS to plan anh produce a complete high school chemistry course on film, John Raxter and his committee came through with a ~~~~~
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funds carried CBA to fulfillment. The other program leading to a new approach to high school chemistry, CHEMS, (Chemical Education Materials Study), was forming, relormine, even fermenting in the minds of many chemical educ.rtor.., %$,thatwhen ir 11cynt1i n omtnirrrt i n I96O,astrorly; viwrdinntivl eifurt was ~nimedii~tels I~unched.Hs 19W.hulldreds of high school teachers were attending summer institutes to become familiar with the new approaches. The most significant influence of all these programs, so extensively supported and consequently so extensively incorporated into high school curricula, was the emphasis that chemistry is an experimental science. Regardless of whether tancent-sohere models or the entroov .. effects of randomness remained in high school chemistry, the doing of real experiments, not merely the formerly inevitable "describe-thewhite-precipitate-that-forms" exercises pn~foundlychanged students' first experience with chemistry. The Sputnik syndrome ultimately reached the college and university level. For this, the NSF took the initiative in 1961 hv reanestine that a oroeram be undertaken to take advantaee of the'presuied outputof the CBA-CHEMS curricula as their alumni reached college. A series of planning meetings culminated in the establishment of the Advisory Council on College Chemistry, (AC:,) in 1963. AC:?prudently olanned neither a complete~bulldozingof existing course'structures nor the erecting of new skyscrapers of course reoreanization. Rather, itrr 4 x yr:m m t l l its d~iiolutimin 1969, 11~ e n wdfi a S ~ ~ I I i111dcltwinr house icjr ;nno\.nti\.e ide:ti and i n f o r n ~ . ~ t ~A('.
