TEACHING AND RESEARCH*
In the first place I should like to call attention to the wordmg of the subject. It is teachmg and research not teaching or research; neither is i t teaching versus research. The two are not to be compared nor contrasted hut l i k e d together; an association of two activities, either one of which is incomplete in itself. I think that it is both unwise and unprofitable to extol teaching as being an easier job, more desirable, more self-denying, more worthy, though less highly remunerative, than research; or to enlarge upon research as being more brilliant, more fundamental, more laborious, and therefore more highly paid than teaching. Such comparison and valuation of the two is sometimes made and usually most erroneously. The labor involved in a work and the self-sacrifice or altruism or service, or whatever you may wish to call it, that one puts into his work, and also, in most cases, the monetary reward that one obtains for it, depend not so much upon the type of work as upon the man h i s e l f . Any work is an easy job to the man who is huilt that way, and any work will be as exacting and exhausting and as self-sacrificing as any other if a man throws his whole life into it. Teaching and research are inseparable. The foundation of teaching is research, and the object of research is cert~inlyteaching, that is, the diusion of knowledge. These are days of universal educat&n, especially in this country, and the teachmg profession has become increasingly large and important. Restricting our thoughts to our own science of chemistry, the multiplication of universities, colleges, and schools of technology, and the place of chemistry in the curriculum, not only of the university and technical school but of the ordinary college and of the secondary school, opens to a multitude of young men trained in chemistry the opportunity to take up teaching as a profession. Research, also, is no longer living a cloistered life, hut is being recognized by industry, is attracting support by federal, state, and private endowments, and even finding a place in our daily newspaper. Thus, due to their tremendous growth and development under modern conditions of society and industry, both teaching and research are tending to separate themselves from each other and to become independent professions. In the days when Liebig huilt the first university laboratory for the teaching of chemistry, teaching and research together constituted a small *Read before the Division of Chemical Education at the 76th Meeting of the A. C. S., September 12, 1928, at Swampsmtt, Mass.
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unit centering about one man. The bright boy, Michael Faraday, knew that to be associated with the great Sir Humphry Davy in his investigations would, in itself, be an education and Davy, his teacher. The greatest teachers were those whose laboratories were the most prolific in investigations and to produce a series of important researches in the rapidly developing science of chemistry insured the author a position in one of the leading universities. Thus did the relation between teaching and research become firmly established, so firmly, in fact, that no one thinks of denying it. I would be one of the last to admit that these two functions or activities should ever be separated, for I believe that the union of the two is fundamental and reaches to the very root of the life of each. As I said before, research is the foundation of teaching and also the inspiring motive force of the teacher, and the spreading of knowledge, which is simply teaching, is the only true and real object of all research. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we have been a little too rigid and narrow in our definitions and valuations, and that modern circumstances and conditions of both teaching and research require us to broaden our views somewhat, if we are to maintain our position that the two are not independent but associated activities. When this Chemical Society was first organized a little over fifty years ago, and for practically the first half of that period, the membership was made up largely of men in academic life. Now our members number several times what they did in 1900, and the increase is largely from the industrial side. Our journals that today are fified with the results of investigations so numerous and so far-reaching in variety and application that i t is hopeless to think of "keeping up with research," have been increased largely by the products of research laboratories that have no academic connection. In this way we seem to be tending toward a divorce of research from teaching. Is it not also true, on the other hand, that many teachers, often men of excellent ability as chemists, find, especially as the years advance and promotion in rank brings added administrative duties, that they are simply forced to give up all thought of original laboratory investigation? It has usually been true that a man, findmg himself gradually losing opportunity to publish, struggles against the odds and feels that he is losing standing simply because his name does not appear frequently in the journals. Now, all this, i t seems to me, is wrong. Teach'mg, in itself, is a work worthy of a man's best life and the whole of it. If,b e w m of taste and talent for administration, or for the fuller intensification of the personal side of teaching itself, a young chemist finds that laboratory investigation, with the publication of results, is for him impossible, he should not be forced to feel that he is cutting himself off from standing
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as a chemist, but should realize that what he is doing is contributing to the life of his science and is thus really research. Two contending forces seem to be present in such a situation. One is the attitude of institutions and individuals, that only by published researches is a man's teachmg ability to he judged and the other is the fact that, in most colleges, promotion in faculty rank means the increase of purely administrative duties, and nothing is so absorbing of time and consequently so destructive of research. If research .belongs with teaching then, certainly, our colleges and our secondary schools should recognize the fact and not make it necessary, or a t least the natural course, for a man to give up ideas of research and take on administrative functions in order to satisfactorily rise in rank and salary. In our universities and sometimes in the larger colleges this fact is recognized, but often this is not the case in the run of smaller colleges and especially in our secondary schools. Also, on the other hand, if a young man feels that administration and not research is the work in which his taste and ability lie, then this society and, in particular, this Division of Chemical Education should not fail to recognize accomplishments, other than research, that go to make teaching a full and complete task. I have purposely been using the term research as I thimk i t is commonly interpreted, viz., as laboratory investigation and the publication of the results as an original contributwlz to knowledge. Surely to contribute even a very tiny bit to the vast stor5 of knowledge that constitutes the science of chemistry, and to know b t that bit is new to the world is an inspiring thiig to do. We learned as children about "little drops of water and little grains of sand" so that however minute or special our contribution may be we are content. And we know, also, that sometimes some one, not as a mere matter of chance, but because of industry and imagination, brings forth, by research, the discoveries of new fundamental ideas that make pillars for the palace of chemistry. Nothiig is so inspirmg to a student, provided he is thoroughly in earnest, as to read or be told of those original contributions to knowledge that tbgether have resulted in the chemistry of the electron and isotopes, of colloids and synthetic dyes, and medicines. In no way can we do better, to keep pace with the interest and enthusiasm of athletics, than by helping our advanced students to actually use their own hands and their own minds to make an original contribution to knowledge. Having once made such a research the wine enters the blood and a young man goes out to take a position and nothing counts to h i but research. And it is well that this is so, for I would emphasize, with all the power that my words may carry, the thought that a young man beginning his work as a chemist-whether that work may be as a teacher in a school, an assistant in a college or
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university, or a routine analytical job in an experiment station or in an industrial research laboratory; wherever his training and opportunity place him, whatever his special duties may be--a young chemist should clearly realize that his freedom of time from other absorbing duties, with which freedom of time alone can he do research, this freedom of time remains his, and with rapidly diminishing value, only during the first few, perhaps ten or so, years of his active life. I do not mean that there are no men who are able to carry on research through a long and active life, for there are, in fact, many such in our ranks today, in our universities and research laboratories. But, for the rank and file of chemists who start out with the original contribution that gave them their degree, in so far as they are successful in the position they fill, just in a reverse proportion does their time for research remain. I think from all that I have said no one will doubt that I believe in the great and fundamental importance of research-*% original contribution to kflowledge-in relation to the teaching of chemistry, that it is inseparable from it. But now I would like to make the suggestion that we broaden the meaning of the term research. And to broaden it I would shorten it by cutting out the word original. Also I would substitute growth, deuelop ment, or actiuity, for the term knowledge. In other words, any contribution to the active development, growth, or real life of our science is truly research. Interpreted in this larger way no teacher wed feel that his activities prevent him from lmking the word research with his teaching. If he so loves the daily routine tasks of class and laboratory work with his students, even though the students may be beginners only, surely he has a right to feel that he is contributing to the life of chemistry, for out of those he teaches there may arise some who distinctly advance the frontiers of our science by their discoveries. And, if the absorption of his time by actual class work and administrative activities leaves him only scattered free hours and hours at night in his home when, though no laboratory work is possible, he does find freedom to study, to th'mk, and to write, surely the production of textbooks, eve6 elementary ones, may constitute for him his contribution to the l i e of chemistry. To be sure, such contribution is not original, except in expression and in system, and the knowledge contained therein is fundamental and elemental in relation to the science it elucidates. The author does not push out the boundaries of chemistry, but be does enlarge and spread the influence of its activity and thus its real life. I think that one of our college presidents fully expressed the idea that I am endeavoring to make clear when he said, in substance; that the success of members of the faculty on which promotion would be based, does not
rest only on researches published in the journals but rather upon a man's productive or constructive activity. Such activity might result in published researches, but also in such other forms as administrative work, either in the institution itself or in outside but correlated organizations or societies; enlargement of teaching through extension agencies or by writing of books or for the papers and, finally, personal work with students and in student activities. Such an enlarged view of the field of a teacher's life is surely not only inspiring to the teacher, but is based upon a broad fundamental conception of a teacher's work and, more important still, upon a broad interpretation of the term research. It may seem that the position I am taking is paradoxical in that on the one hand I have tried to show that either teaching or research is, each in itself, a full task for any man and that modem conditions are tending, more and more, to make them separate activities; while on the other hand I am claiming that the two are inseparable. This is, indeed, just the point. Even though we admit that they are being drawn further and further apart we must hold fast to the conviction that only by remaining linked together can either one be all that it should be. If the teacher is to be more than a routine administrative officer he must, by some type of productive work, feel that he is contributing, not simply to knowledge, however worthy that may be, but to the developing life of the science of chemistry. And if research is not to lose its mark of individuality and originality, its vision for seeking for the truth, which i t is in danger of doing in these days of organization an$ supervision and of mercenary rewards for industrial research that will make i t wholly selfish; if research is to remain true to its heritage, i t must keep touch with the spirit of teaching and feel that however independent i t may seem to become it is, in reality, seeking the same end, oiz., the increase and diffusion of knowledge. No life work has greater joy in itself than has teaching if so be the teacher loves his work. But to love it and to be content with i t he must have the understanding acceptance of the worth of what he does by others who may not be living the same life, but who are devoted to the same science. All teachers of chemistry are chemists, and their contributions to the science they love are not small though they may often be intangible and difficult to evaluate. Surely they can feel that teaching and research are not, and must not, be separated either for their own sake or for the sake of chemistry itself.
