Ieditorially
Student Needs:
speaking
Beyond the Camouflage
It is neither irrational nor faint-hearted to conclude that, despite a relatively quiet year, the American university remains in serious trouble. Town and gown animosity continues unabated. Student disaffection is diminished only in it stridency. Mainline faculty eschewal and equivocation persists, unshaken by the antics of a radical minority who see only evil in organization and find hope only in a nebulous utopian anarchy. Inability of administrators, trustees, and legislators to comprehend what the university is continues, despite the constant crisis of leadership this inability assures. The situation remains critical, but not hopeless. Viewed realistically, however, the hope lies less in rapid healing of town-gown wounds, or in upgrading the understanding of administrators, trustees, and legislators, than in an honest facing of legitimate student needs by faculty and in prudent faculty, action aimed a t satisfying these needs. Never before have students tried so hard to express their needs, and perhaps never before has the faculty failed so completely to understand what is being said. What, for example, are students trying to tell us when they talk so much about commitment and yet are unwilling to commit themselves to any useful and creative job, to any social or political code, to even one man or one woman? Why do they talk so much but think and study so little on the major political and social issues of our time? What is behind their insistence on the democratic process, but their reluctance, if not refusal, to work within or to have faith iu this process? Why do they cry out so incessantly for justice and relevance when in their own lives justice is most often resewed for a limited segment of society, mostly those under 30, and relevance more often than not is equated to simplistic, dramatic, even hedonistic, solutions to very . .critical . " and to very trivial problems without discr~minationl A student interpretation of all this is that society functions on a corrupt moral code. If this code were replaced by a good one, equitable resolution of vital issues would occur automatically, and without all the study, struggle, and compromise past generations have been comuelled to endure in effectingchance. An alternative interpretation is that the moral carruption bit is a cop-out to avoid facing the hard truth that building a better world means not only work, sacrifice and duty, but recognition that there are no
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simplistic moral solutions to man's major problems. According to this interpretation, students know better, but hope by oversimplifying the reasons for the shortcomings and failures of the present society-blaming them all on evil people and an evil system-to convince themselves and their teachers that a naive humanism coupled with physical and intellectual indolence is as effective a formula for "muddling through" as any used in the past. The thought is that if enough teachers buy this, it must not be all bad, and it just might be a way of getting through life with a little less struggle. Evidently quite a few teachers, including some who teach college chemistry, are buying this or something related to it, if the communications reaching this office are any indication of what is happening in higher education. Each day brings new course descriptions and new course formats-many of which will appear on our pages-designed to make chemistry courses more relevant, more humanistic, more student-centered. In many of these, important principles of chemistry are presented in more imaginative and more exciting ways. I n many, the chemistry content is clearly secondary to discussions of social and political issues of the day. In a few, the chemistry presented apparently is woven into student-dominated rap sessions whenever the discussion reaches a point where the instructor can inobtrusively interject a concept or two. In nearly all cases, it is clear that instructors are seeking, often desperately, to reach and interest the students, to give them something meaningful and lasting. But what is it that chemistry instructors can give that is likely to be most meaningful and lasting to their students? Is it a profound humanism? I s it an enlightened sociology? Is it a compelling new philosophy? Or is it an appreciation of the material world around them, and a recognition of the constraints on and the oouortunities available to man as he tries to make best use of what nature has provided? The complexities and paradoxes of student behavior make it certain that faculty will have $0 look more deeply into what is troubling students than many have been do so far. When this they undoubtedly will find that the student's greatest needs are to be competent and to be respected. The faculty member knows that these ends can be accomplished only through hard work and personal discipline. To let students believe otherwise would be immoral. WTL
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Volume 48, Number 7, July 1971
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