THE HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE'S PREPAREDNESS FOR COLLEGE CHEMISTRY' T. S. BURKHALTER Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, College Station, Texas
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adequacy or inadequacy of our public-school educational system has been the topic of many heated arguments recently throughout the whole of the United States. A great deal of the barrage of words that have been exploded on this subject, however, may he summed up in a little ditty which originally bore the title of "Poor Child," but it might well have been entitled "Johnny's Preparati~n."~It commences with the college professor speaking:
Now Johnny dearly loves to talk about the atomic bomb, rocket propellants, and space travel, but he just cannot quite bring himself to concentrate on the law of multiple proportions. I n order to concentrate on the law of multiple proportions Johnny has to think; thinking is a painful process and he would rather have fun dreaming about invent,ing a new and revolutionary fission reactor. Of course, he never realizes that before he can begin to understand the principles of fission, he must first completely master Such rawness in a pupil is a shame; the fundamental principles of chemistry. The point is Lack of preparation in the high school is to blame. that Johnny never has been trained to study. He The high-school teacher responds with: has never been brought to the realization that there are times when he his to sit down, read a textbook, Good heavens what crudity! The boy's a fool. The fault, of course, is in the grammar school. and think, think about what he has read. The comI most frequently hear when counseling my failing ment But the grammar school teacher will have none of this, students is invariably this: "I just don't know how to so: studv! Whv in hixh school. I never cracked a book From such stupidity may I he spared; and made "good &des." ' They send them up to me so unprepared Second, Johnny is unprepared in the fundamentals ~h~ primary teacher continues to upass the buck,, of mathematics.- chemistry is a science and, therefore, it is essential that one who is to succeed in the with: studv of chemistrv must be able to handle s~-i m ~ l e Kindergarten blockhead! And they call that preparation! arithmetical manipulations. I do not mean calcnlus, Worse than none a t all. trigonometry, or even qeometw! But he must he able to-handle Gr'ith ease sbch operations as multiplication, The kindergarten teacher will not be outdone: division, addition, and subtraction of both whole numSuch lack of training never did I see. bers and fractions; he must be able to handle straight What kind of woman must that mother be? nercentaxe - .vroblems. s i m ~ l eratio. and nro~ortion: ~ u mother, t as has the last and irrefutable and he must be able to solve simple linear equations with one unknown. Above all he must be able to xvnrd : think quantitatively in terms of numbers. He must Poor Johnny dear, he is not to blame. be able to read a stated problem, assimilate the facts His father's folks are just the same. given, determine what unknown value is desired, and Through all this the subject most ignored is "Poor recognize the implied relation between the known and Johnny," but Johnny really is in trouhle. It is not the unknown. This Johnny cannot do! Johnny canmy intent to point the finger of blame a t any segment not calculate the weight of hydrogen released from of our educational system (even Johnny's father's sulfuric acid by the action of a given amount of zinc; folks). But Johnny i s poorly prepared for college not because he does not understand the chemistry work. I n what way is he unprepared? I am going involved, but because he gets lost in the numbers to restrict my remarks to his preparation for college involved. Johnny is also poorly prepared in reading comprechemistry although I am firmly convinced that preparation for college chemistry is equally applicable to hension. Johnny can read but he does not know what he has read if the sentences contain words of more than preparation for college work in general. First of all Johnny is unused to mental discipline. two syllables. The second most frequent comment ' Presented as part of the Symposium on Chemical Education I hear in counseling failing students is: "I read that -Current Trends before the 11th Southwest Regional Meeting assignment three times last night, and I haven't the faintest idea what it was all about." I believe Johnny, of the American Chemical Society, Houston, December, 1955. The T e r n Outlook, Decemher, 1952, p. 27. 'ANONYMOUS, for I reach for the textbook, read aloud one paragraph ~
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and then ask, "What idea is the author trying to convey?" and Johnny does not know. You see, Johnny has been reading comic books where he can grasp the context by looking a t the pictures. Johnny has been matching "education (?)" films. So, Johnny reads his chemistry assignment in college, but he does not know what he has read; there are not enough pictures. And last, Johnny is unprepared because has not studied chemistry in high school. As a result he does not know what an element or compound is. He does not know the difference between a mixturc and a substance. In fact, Johnny does not know anything about chemistry except that it is a very difficult course; everyone has told him that. So Johnny is scared of the course and he is half whipped before he starts. He gets lost. In order to cover all the material which is pertinent to a course in first-year college chemistry it is necessary to move rather rapidly over the basic nomenclature and Johnny gets lost because Johnny was unprepared. Statistical evidence of the high degree of correlation between failing grades in college chemistry and poor preparation in mathematics is abundant. Louisiana State University has recently reported that not a single student out of 1939 tested who had as much as three and one-half units of high-school mathematics failed in chemistry, physics, or mathematics; only 1.5 per cent of the students who had as much as three units in mathe matics failed in chemistry, physics, or mathematics. On the other hand, 72 per cent of all the failures in mathematics or physical science at the university came from students who had only from one to one and onehalf units in high-school mat he ma tic^.^ At the U. S. Naval Academy all entering plebes take the same course in beginning chemistry regardless of their background. The class consists of three groups: (1) those with some college chemistry prior to academy entrance, (2) those with only high-school chemistry, and (3) those with no high-school chemistry. Among group (1) 22 per cent finished in the top ten per cent of the class; 5.6 per cent of those in group (2) finished in the upper ten per cent of the class; and only 1.3 per cent of those with no high-school chemistry finished in this upper hracket. Of those students who had some previous college chemistry only 2.2 per cent finished in the bottom one-tenth of the class. Ten per cent of those with high-school chemistry finished in the lowest ten per cent, of the class, while 26 per rent of those with no high-school preparation in chemistry finished in the lowest ten per cent of the class.4 At the A. and M. College of Texas we have recently completed the first of a series of studies concerning the reasons for failures in first-year college chemistry. The big question was: which of the achievements should be taken as a criterion of poor preparation for their study of chemistry? To answer this question we conduct,ed a statistical analysis study of the correlation between the results of each of the achievement tests and CHOPPIN, A. R., The Southwest Retort, May, 1955, p. 7. THOMSON, EARLW., J. CHEX.EDUC.,30, 353 (1953).
the final grade of the student in his beginning chemistry course. With this correlative data we could then write a regression equation relating the dependency of the final grade on the results of each of the achievement tests. This regression equation mould then take the form. Y =a BlXl 82x2 + . . . & X . where Y is the predicted final grade in chemistry; X's are scores of achievement tests and the B's are the weights showing the variation in Y accounted for by variation of the X values; a is a residual constant taken from the data. The achievement tests which are administered are:
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XI-American Council on Education Psychological Examinntion, 1949 edition (commonly called (3 score). This is s. test of general scholsstic aptitude and furnishes a score which ia of value in predicting aver-all academic arhievement. X2-The Shsdor General Mathematics Test (Educational Testing Service). This test measures a student's ability to handle a wide variety of areas which have a numerical basis. XrCooperative Elementary Algebva. Test, Revified Form Z (Educational Testing Service). This measures a student's ability to handle algebraic problems. It covers those phases of algebra whioh a student presumably learns in beginning and intermediate algebra. XA-Cooperative Chemistry Test, Revised Series Form Z (Educational Testing Service). This test was administered only to those ietudents who had completed a course in high-school chemistry. X5-Cooperative English Test "A," Mechanics of Expression "T" (Educational Tcsting Service). This test evdt.lustes a student's knowlodge of grammatical usage, as well as his knowledge of punctuation and eapitalizstion and spelling. XsDiagnostio Reeding Test, Survey Soction Form C (Educational Testing Service). This has three snhtests: general reading, vocabulary, and comprehension. It gives a reading rate, voesbulsry, and eomprchonsian scare. X-As an additional variable we decided to include in our correlative study t,he student's over-all high-school average.
The presentation of the mechanics of a correlative statistical analysis study is both space consuming and of little interest to the majority of readers and for that reason will be omitted here. It will suffice to state that standard methods were employed. The ultimate goal, of course, was to obtain numerical values for each of the beta weights and the residual constants as well as to determine the error of estimate. The group was broken into two populations: those who had had high-school chemistry and those who had not. For population I (those students with no highschool chemistry, about 40 per cent of the total) the solution of the problem resulted in beta weights of the order of zcro for all variables except Xg and Xy. For population I1 all the betas were of the order of zero except those of X,, X,, and X I . The values of these bctas and the final regression equation are presented in the table. The difference in the beta weights used in the table and those in the equation is due to the difference in the units of raw score on the tests and the percentile form of Y. The standard error of estimate for population I is 13 points while that for population 11is 9 points. These results changed our preconceived ideas. We
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had, of course, expected the high correlation with algebra, but why did not the Snader (general mathematics) score show more significantly? Further, the results on reading comprehension had not shown to be statistically significant, and this was a score which we had felt for certain would show the highest order of correlation. Then we realized our mistake. The analysis had been made on only those students who had Values of Beta Weights and the Residual Constants Variable
-Beta Sample I
value-
Sample I1
++0.8349X7 - 22.71. 0.1903X4 + 0.4283Z +
For popolation I: Y = 0.3044Xa For p o ~ i ~ l a t i a11: n Y = 0.3645Xa
5 435.
finished the course and who thereby had received a final numerical grade. We had not included those students who had dropped the course prior to its completion and, therefore, had received no final numerical average. This group accounted for 16 per cent of the total enr&nent. -A quick look a t the records of those 16 per cent gaveus theanswer. Practically every student who had made a very low grade on either the Snader or reading comprehension test had dropped the
course before mid-semester. These were the students we had not included in our study. Another thing which bothered us was the fact that the student's high-school average registered so importantly while the Q score, which was supposed to be indicative of general scholastic aptitude, was not significant. Again after some thought the explanation was obvious. The Q score is indicative of what the student was able to do; but the high-school average was indicative of what the student was willing to do. Mental discipline! We had thought that the high-school average would he of little value because of the wide diversity of curriculum choice and programming in the various schools of the state. Surely a "C" student from the large and wealthy schools of the cities would be as well prepared as an "A" student from "Podunk Hi." But it did not t u n out that way. I t seems that the boy who has been trained to work and to think is the one most apt to succeed. This can only mean that mental discipline, the will to study and work, training in good study habits, training in concentration-these are the things which best prepare a student for collegelevelstudies. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The very valuable assistance of C. H. Ransdall, Dean of the Basic Division, in securing the data and in the solution of the statistical analysis is gratefully acknowledged.
