edited bv GARYE. DUNKLEBERGER Carroll County Public Schools
"The Fundamental Things Apply As Time Goes By" Frank Cardulla Niles Township High Schools, Niles North, 9800 Lawler Avenue, Skokie, IL 60077
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Kansas Lies Outside My Door.. There are two very different views from my classroom. It depends upon whether the door is open or closed. The view with the door open is disheartening. I see a nation sorely in need of an Educational Renaissance, a country that spends more on alcohol and tobacco than upon public secondary education. I see too manv schools out of control. disciolinarv standards so eroded &at the purposes to which edication should aspire become long-forgotten goals as teachers struggle to survive each day. I see insensitive, bureaurocratic systems that frustrate dedicated people until they quit in disgust or adapt and adjust and begin to accept the insanity around them as the natural order of things. I am not an educational philosopher nor a student of the social and cultural ills that beset our nation and our school system. I can do little to ameliorate the large-scale problems that confront us. I am only a chemistry teacher, so I close my door, facemv class, try tomake mv .'litilv w r n ~ r "as excellek as if can I,;, and l&vr the large-r prol~lemsto thoar Letter equipped to d c d with t11t.m. It would seem, however, less than-honest to write a "view" article without a t least including a reference to these deeper prohlems. They are so much a part of all our lives.
.. . But I Teach in the Land of Or With the door to my classroom closed, the view brightens considerably. Teaching is a strange endeavor. After practicing it for over 20 years, I have found very few absolutes. The program a t Niles North has been recognized as "excellent" by those who judge such things. That's very gratifying, but also frightening. It's gratifying because I often wonder how others who see many classrooms might judge what goes on in mine. It's frightening because a t any given moment I am not always certain exactly why I am doing what I am doing, despite years of pondering the topic. Teaching seems to be more art than science. We do what seems right a t the moment, hopinp that we inspire more often than wefrustrate, enlighten moreoften than we confuse, and bring joy more often than we bring pain. ouri We never know for certainwhat effect we are having & students. I know what I do, and hope it is more right than wrong for most of my students. Many people have told me,
some in praise, others in implied or direct criticism, that what
I do is not what most teachers do. Perhaps that's true, perhaps not. At any rate, here is how I see things. "The square of the hypoteneuse seldom comes up in real life" I have become convinced over the years that many of the accepted methods of teaching introductory chemistry are, a t best, virtually useless, and a t worst, downright harmful. That is a very strong statement, and certainly demands elaboration and justification. Let's begin by clarifying what I see as the ultimate value in takine a course in chemistrv. Too often. especially in this era of ;he "behavioral objectke," we focus our attention and efforts on getting the student to he ahle to achieve the right answer to a problem, e.g., "The student will he able to transform the weieht of a chemical into the numher of moles of the chemical." since many of our students have a lot of difficulty trying to solve typical introductory chemistry problems, we valiantly search for "techniques" and "gimmicks" to assist them, the most popular of which is the factor-label approach to solving problems. Somehow or other, this philosophy has never made much intuitive sense to me. It would seem that there should he a larger purpose in having our students spend so much time studying our discipline than simply learning how to work stoichiometry problems, or write electron configurations, or calculate free energy changes for reactions, or any of the other multitudinous tasks to which our students apply themselves. Certainly students emerging from a year of study should be ahle to do these thines. hut to do them mechanically and without understanding Ys to do little of real value. Unfortunatelv, it amears that we too often es.. tahlisl~H our gcnl [he pt.ri
