EDITORIALLY SPEAKING
The Changing Role of the Science Teacher W i t h i n the last few years our knowledge of science has grown so expIosively that the science teacher is faced with problems and responsibilities which teachers of earlier generations could not even imagine. If he is to fill this new role, the teacher must constantly expand his knowledge of science and must greatly improve his methods of teaching. I t is an exciting challenge, hut a difficult one. I t has been calculated from the number of articles appearing in the scientific literature that more than half of all of the chemical research which has ever been published has appeared within the lifetime of the average college student. Not only have new elements, new compounds, and new processes been discovered. but our concepts of the nature of matter have been almost remade. The vocabulary of the chemistry student today abounds with phrases which express ideas which did not even exist a few years ago-atomic fusion, Lewis acid, =-electron, carbonium ion, molecular orbital, radiocarbon dating, chelation, cyclotron, and many more. Some of this great store of knowledge is of academic interest only, but we are surrounded by evidence that a great deal of it has found application in thousands of ways. Paradoxically, however, these developments have not been paralleled by an increasing interest in science on the part of the general public. Americans, a t least in the past, have been quite willing to accept the bounties of science without making any attempt to understand them, or to appreciate the men or the methods that have made them possible. Indeed,
anti-intellectualism and contempt for learning have been almost characteristic of our time. With the successful launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik, an abrupt change took place in the attitude of the American public toward science. Chemists and physicists-indeed, scholars of almost every kindachieved a new status in the eyes of the public, and teachers of science came to be looked upon with a new respect. After three decades of struggling against a waning interest in science, we must now struggle equally hard to meet the new demands for more rigorous and better teaching, both at the high school and college levels. The new role, while it is more flattering than the old, is much more difficult, for it requires a better knowledge of science and better teaching methods, as well as the exerciee of leadership and keen imagination. The chemistry student of today must learn much more than did his predecessors of a generation ago: for there is a great deal more to learn; in order to prevent giving him an impossible load, the teacher must continually revise his course, including new material which is of real eignificance, and culling out older topics which are outmoded or of diminishing importance. This is a task of unending and increasing difficulty, and many teachers neglect it, either by failing to include newly discovered facts and new theories, or by teaching only the new material with no regard for the way in which the current concepts developed. Of these two faults, the latter is (Continued on page 156)
JOHN C. BAILAR, JR., 1959 President of the American Chemical Society, is well known to readers of these pages. He has served the Division of Chemical Education as chairman and THIS JOURNAL a6 a member of the Editorial Board. He is "Mr. Inorganic Chemistry" to many, including the inorganic chemists themselves who elected him the first chairman of their newly formed Jlivision in 1957. As an author he has ranged from "Essentials of College Chemistry" to the monumental ACS monograph "The Chemistry of Coordination Compounds" and as an Editor-in-Chief of "Inorganio Synthcscs." The University of Illinois whcre he is now head of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry has been, since 1928, the hese from which his travels in behalf of chemistry and professional chemists have taken him to all parts of the world. Few chemists are better qualified to state the case for "The Changing Role of the Science Teacher." Volume 36, Number 4, April 1959
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The Changing Role--Continued
probably the more serious, for a student who does not learn that each generation builds its theories on those of the previous generation will fail to realize that the ideas which he is taught must surely give way to better ones in a few years; thus, he will have failed entirely to catch the spirit of scientific inquiry. With the rapid growth of our knowledge of science, however, no teacher can trim enough from his courses to include all of the material that should he included in it; he must, therefore, develop moreefficient methods of
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teaching, both by improving his own presentation of the subject matter and by using TV, demonstrations, moving pictures, and the many other teaching aids which are now available to him, Though the role which the teacher plays varies with the growth of our chemical thinking and with the tenor of the times, his fundamental task never encourage and inspire his students, and to give them a of what he, He must never forget that uthe mind is a pyre to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled." JOHNC. BAILAR, dn.
